Blood Brothers
by LadyKirklandJones
Summary: Golden-Shore Farm with its grand Southern mansion, set among dark cypress swamps in Louisiana, harbors terrible blood-stained secrets and family ghosts. Heir to them all is Alfred Jones, young, rash and handsome, whom Francis takes under his wing. Read inside for more...
1. Dear Francis

**Welcome Welcome one and all! This is my new fanfiction 'Blood Brothers'. This one takes a more serious note than my other fanfictions and I am proud to say...welcome to the darker side of my mind *insert evil laugh***

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**_Description~_**

**_Golden-Shore Farm with its grand Southern mansion, set among dark cypress swamps in Louisiana, harbors terrible blood-stained secrets and family ghosts. Heir to them all is Alfred Jones, young, rash and handsome, whom Francis takes under his wing. But Alfred is in thrall not only to the past and his own appetites but, even more dangerously, to a companion spirit, a 'goblin' succubus who could destroy him and others. Only the unearthly power of Francis combined with the earthly powers of the Kirkland clan could hope to save Alfred from himself and his ghosts, or to rescue the doomed girl Alfred loves from her own mortality. Pairings are- Fem!England x /Alfred's Point Of View._**

**_Warnings- Mature language, quite Dark themes, talk of suicide later on_**

**_Disclaimer~_**

**_I Do Not Own Any Of Hetalia Or The Contents Of Hetalia I Do Not Own The Characters Or Anything..._**

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Francis,

If you find this letter in your house in the Rue Royale, and I do sincerely think you will find it - you'll know at once that I've broken your rules. I know that New Orleans if off limits to blood hunters, and that any found there will be destroyed by you. And unlike many a rogue invader whom you have already dispatched, I understand your reasons. You don't wish for us to be seen by members of the Silvine. You don't want a war with the Order of Psychic Detectives, both for their sake and our own. But please, I beg of you, before you come in search of me, read what I have to say.

My name is Alfred. I'm twenty-two years old, and have been a Blood Hunter, as my Maker called it, for slightly less than a year. I'm an orphan now, as I see it, and it is to you that I turn for help. But before I make my case, please understand that I know the Silvine, that I knew them before the Dark Blood was ever given to me, and I know of their inherent goodness and their legendary neutrality as regards to things supernatural, and I will have taken great pains to elude them in placing this letter in your flat. The fact that you keep a telepathic watch over New Orleans is plain to me. That you'll find the letter I have no doubt. If you do come to bring a swift justice to me for my disobedience assure me please that you will do your utmost best to destroy a spirit which has been my companion since I was a child. This creature, a duplicate of me who has grown with me since before I can remember, now poses a danger to humans as well as to myself.

Let me explain.

As a little boy I named this spirit Goblin, and that as well before anyone had told me nursery rhymes or fairy tales in which such a word might appear. Whether the name came from the spirit himself I don't know. However, at the mere mention of the name, I could always call him to me. Many a time he came of his own accord and wouldn't be banished. At others, he was the only friend I had. Over the years, he has been my constant familiar, maturing as I matured and becoming ever more skilled at making known to me his wishes. You could say I strengthened and shaped Goblin, unwittingly creating the monster that he is now. The truth is, I can't imagine existence without Goblin. But I have to imagine it. I have to put an end to Goblin before he metamorphoses into something utterly beyond my control. Why do I call him a monster - this creature who was once my only playmate? The answer is simple. In the months since my being made a Blood Hunter - and understand, i had no choice whatsoever in the matter - Goblin has acquired his own taste for blood. After every feeding, I am embraced by him, and blood is drawn from me into him by a thousand minuscule wounds, strengthening the image of him, and lending to his presence a soft fragrance which Goblin never had before. With each passing month, Goblin becomes stronger, and his assaults on me more prolonged. I can no longer fight him off. It won't surprise you, I don't think, that these assaults are vaguely pleasurable, not as pleasurable to me as feeding on a human victim, but they involve a vague orgasmic shimmer that I can't deny. But it is not my vulnerability to Goblin that worries me now. It is the question of what Goblin may become.

Now, I have read your Supernatural Chronicles through and through. They were given to me by my Maker, an ancient Blood Hunter who gave me, according to his version of things, an enormous amount of strength as well. In your stories you talk of the origins of many creatures, mainly vampires. You quote an ancient Egyptian Elder Blood Drinker who told the tale to the wise one, Britannia, who centuries ago passed it on to you. Whether you and Britannia made up some of what was written in your books I don't know. You and your comrades, the Coven of the Articulate, as you are now called, may well have a penchant for telling lies. But I don't think so. I'm living proof that Blood Drinkers exist - whether they are called Blood Drinkers, vampires, Children of the Night or Children of the Millenia - and the manner in which I was made conforms to what you describe. Indeed, though my Maker called us Blood Hunters rather than vampires, he used words which have appeared in your tales. The Cloud Gift he gave to me so that I can travel effortlessly by air; and also the Mind Gift to seek out telepathically the sins of my victims; as well as the Fire Gift to ignite the fire in the iron stove here that keeps me warm. So I believe your stories. I believe in you. I believe you when you say that Alhanalem, the first of the vampires, was created when an evil spirit invaded every fiber of her being, a spirit which had, before attacking her, acquired a taste for human blood. I believe you when you say that this spirit, named Chastel by the two witches who could see him and hear him -Margarita and Mitternarch- exists now in all of us, his mysterious body, if we may call it that, having grown like a rampant vine to blossom in every Blood Hunter who is made by another, right on up to the present time. I know as well from your stories that when the witches Margarita and Mitternarch were made Blood Hunters, they lost the ability to see and talk to spirits. And indeed my Maker told me that I would lose I assure you, I have not lost my powers as a seer of spirits. I am still their magnet. And it is perhaps this ability in me, this receptiveness, and my early refusal to spurn Goblin, that have given him the strength to be plaguing me for vampiric blood now.

Francis, if this creature grows ever more strong, and it seems there is nothing I can do to stop him, is it possible that he can enter a human being, as Abel did in ancient times? Is it possible that yet another species of the vampiric root may be created, and from that root yet another vine? I cannot imagine your being indifferent to this question, or to the possibility that Goblin will become a killer of humans, though he is far from that strength right now.I think you will understand when I say that I'm frightened for those whom I love and cherish - my mortal family - as well as for any stranger whom Goblin might eventually attack. It's hard to write these words. For all my life I have loved Goblin and scorned anyone who denigrated him as an "imaginary playmate" or a "foolish obsession." But he and I, for so long closest friends, are now enemies, and I dread his attacks because I feel his increasing strength. Goblin withdraws from me utterly when I am not hunting, only to reappear when the fresh blood is in my veins. We have no spiritual interaction now, Goblin and I. He seems afire with jealously that I've become a Blood Hunter. It's as though his childish mind has been wiped clean of all it once learned. It is an agony for me, all of this. But let me repeat; it is not on my account that I write to you. It is in fear of what Goblin may become. Of course I want to lay eyes upon you. I want you, the great breaker of rules, to forgive me that I have broken your rules. I want you, who was kidnapped and made a vampire against your will to look kindly on me because the same thing happened to me.

I want you to forgive my trespassing into your old flat in the Rue Royale, where I hope to hide this letter. I want you to know as well that I haven't hunted in New Orleans and never will. And speaking of hunting, I too have been taught to hunt the Evil Doer, and though my record isn't perfect, I'm learning with each feast. I've also mastered the Little Drink, as you so elegantly call it, and I'm a visitor to noisy mortal parties who is never noticed as he feeds from one after another in quick and deft moves. But in the main, my existence is lonely and bitter. If it weren't for my mortal family, it would be unendurable. As for my Maker, I shun him and his cohorts, and with reason. That's a story I'd like to tell you. In fact, there are many stories I want to tell you. I pray that my stories may keep you from destroying me. You know, we could play a game. We meet and I start talking, and slap damn, you kill me when I take a verbal turn you don't like. But seriously, Goblin is my concern. Let me add before I close that during this last year of being a fledgling Blood Hunter, of reading your Chronicles and trying to learn from them, I have often been tempted to go to the Silvine Motherhouse at Oak Haven, outside of New Orleans. I have often been tempted to ask the Silvine for counsel and help. When I was a boy - and I'm barely more than that now - there was a member of the Silvine who was able to see Goblin as clearly as I could - a gentle, nonjudgmental Englishman named Walter Oliver, who advised me about my powers and how they could become to strong for me to control. I grew to love Walter within a very short time.

I also fell in love with a young girl who was in the company of Walter when I met him, a red-haired beauty with considerable paranormal power who could also see Goblin - one to whom the Silvine had opened its generous heart. That young girl is beyond my reach now. Her name is Aria, Aria Kirkland. A name that is not unfamiliar to you, though this young girl probably knows nothing of your friend and companion Arthur Kirkland, even to this day. But she is most certainly from the same family of powerful psychics - they seem to delight in calling themselves witches - and I have sworn never to see her again. With her considerable powers she would realize at once that something catastrophic has happened to me. And I cannot let my evil touch her in any way.

When I read your Chronicles, I was mildly astonished to discover that the Silvine had turned against the Blood Hunters. My Maker had told me this, but I didn't believe it until I read it in your books. It's still hard for me to imagine that these gentle people have broken one thousand years of neutrality in a warning against all of out kind. They seemed so proud of their benevolent history, so psychologically dependent upon a secular and kindly definition of themselves. Obviously, I can't go to the Silvine now. They might become my sworn enemies if I do that. They are my sworn enemies! And on account of my past contact, they know exactly where I live. But more significantly, I can't seek their help because you don't want it. You and the other members of the Coven of the Articulate do not want one of us to fall into the hands of an order of scholars who are only too eager to study us at close range. As for my red-haired Kirkland love, let me repeat that I wouldn't dream of approaching her, though I've sometimes wondered if her extraordinary powers couldn't help me to somehow put an end to Goblin for all time. But this could not be done without frightening her and confusing her, and I won't interrupt her human destiny as mine was interrupted for me. I feel even more cut off from her than I did in the past.

And so, except for my mortal connections, I'm alone.I don't expect your pity on account of this. But maybe your understanding will prevent you from immediately annihilating me and Goblin without so much as a warning. That you can find both of us I have no doubt. If even half the Chronicles are true, it's plain that your Mind Gift is without measure. Nevertheless, let me tell you where I am.

My true home is the wooden hermitage on Sugar Devil Island, deep in Sugar Devil Swamp, in northeastern Louisiana, not far from the Mississippi border. Sugar Devil Swamp is fed by the West Ruby River, which branches off from the Ruby at Rubyville. Acres of this deep cypress swamp have belonged to my family for generations, and no mortal ever accidentally finds his way in here to Sugar Devil Island, I'm certain of it, though my great-great-great-grandfather Axellion Jones did build the house in which I sit, writing to you now. Our ancestral home is Golden-Shore manor, an august if not overblown house in the grandest Greek Revival style, replee with enormous and dizzying Cointhian columns, an immence structure on high ground. For all its huffing and puffing beauty, it lacks the grace and dignity of New Orleans homes, being a truly pretentious monument to Axellion Jones's greed and dreams. Constructed in the 1880's, without a plantation to justify it, it had no real purpose but to give delight to those who lived in it. The entire property - swamp, land and monstrous house - is known as Golden-Shore Farm. That the house and land around it are haunted is not only legend but fact. Goblin is without a doubt the most potent of the spirits, but there are ghosts here as well. Do they want the Dark Blood from me? For the most part, they seem far too weak for such a possibility, but who is to say that ghosts don't see and learn? God knows I have some accursed capacity to draw their attention and to endow them with some crucial vitality. It's been happening all of my life.

Have I tried your patience? I hope to God that I have not. But this letter may be my one chance with you, Francis. And so I've said the things that matter to me most. And when I reach your flat in the Rue Royale, I'll use every bit of wit and skill at my command to place this letter where no one will find it but you. Believing in that ability, I sign my name,  
Alfred Jones.

Postscript.  
Remember I'm only twenty-two and a bit clumsy. But I can't resist this small request. If you do mean to track me down and eradicate me, could you give me an hour's notice to say some sort of farewell to the one mortal relative I love most in all the world? In the Chronicle tale called Angleterre, you were described wearing a coat with cameo buttons. Was that the truth or someone's fanciful embellishment? If you wore those cameo buttons - indeed, if you chose them carefully and you loved them - then for the sake of those cameos, let me, before being destroyed, say farewell to an elderly woman of incredible charm and benevolence who loves each evening to spread out her hundreds of cameos on her marble table and examine them one by one in the light. She is my great-aunt and my teacher in all things, a woman who has sought to endow me with all I need to live an important life. I'm not worthy of her love now. I'm not alive now. But she doesn't know this. My nightly visits to her are cautious but nevertheless crucial to her. And should I be taken from her without warning and without some explanation, it would be a cruelty she doesn't deserve.

Ah, there is much more that I could tell you about her cameos - about the role in which they have played in my fate. But for now, let me only plead with you. Let me live, and help me destroy Goblin. Or put an end to us both.

Sincerely,

Alfred.

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**Well, I was surprised with myself after I read this through. This is actually quite deep...hehe *grins* Well, R&R and I should have the next chapter up within the next few days ^_^ That's if you want more...hehehe :) Let me know! I have really tried with this chapter :)**

**Lady Jones! Peace out!**


	2. Meeting the vampire

For a long time after I finished the letter, I didn't move.

I sat listening to the inevitable sounds of Sugar Devil Swamp, my eyes on the pages before me, noting against my will the boring regularity of the handwriting, the muted lamps around me reflected in the marble flooring, the glass windows open to the night breeze.

All was well in my little palazzo in the swampland.

No sign of Goblin. No sense of Goblin's thirst or enmity. Nothing but that which was natural, and faraway, keen to my vampiric ears, the faint stirrings from Blackwood Manor, where my aunt was just rising, with the loving help of Jaz, our housekeeper, for a mildly eventful night. Soon the television would be going with an enchanting old black-and-white movie. Dragonwyck or Laura, Rebecca or Wuthering Heights. In an hour perhaps my aunt would be saying to Jaz, "Where is my Little Boy?"

But for now there was time for courage. Time to follow through.

I took the cameo out of my pocket and looked at it. A year ago, when I was still mortal - still alive - I would have had to hold it to the lamp, but not now. I could see it clearly. It was my own head, in semi-profile, carved skillfully from a fine piece of double-strata sardonyx so that the image was entirely white and remarkably detailed. The background was a pure and shining black. It was a heavy cameo, and excellent as to the craft. I'd had it done to give to my beloved aunt, more of a little joke than anything else, but the Dark Blood had come before the perfect moment. And now that moment was forever past. What did it show of me? A long oval face, with features that were too delicate - a nose too narrow, eyes round with round eyebrows and a full cupid's-bow mouth that made me look as if I were a twelve-year-old girl. No huge eyes, no high cheekbones, no rugged jaw. Just very pretty, yes, too pretty, which is why I'd scowled for most of the photographs taken for the portrait; but the artist hadn't carved that scowl into the face. In fact, he'd given me a trace of a smile. My short slightly curled hair he'd rendered in thick swirls as if it were an Apollonian halo. He'd carved my shirt collar, jacket lapel and tie with equal grace.

Of course the cameo said nothing of my height of six foot four inches, that my hair was sandy blonde, my eyes blue, or of the fact that I was slight of build. I had the kind of long thin fingers which were very good for the piano, which I played now and then. And it was my height that told people that in spite of my all too precious face and feminine hands, I really was a young man. And so there was this enigmatic creature in a good likeness. A creature asking for sympathy. A creature saying crassly:  
"Well, think about it, Francis. I'm young, I'm stupid. And I'm pretty. Look at the cameo. I'm pretty. Give me a chance."

I'd have engraved the back with those words in tiny script, but the back was an oval photo case, and there was my image again in dull color, verifying the accuracy of the portrait on the other side. There was one engraved word on the gold frame, right beneath the cameo, however: the name Alfred, in a good imitation of that routine handwriting which I had always hated so much - the left-handed one trying to be normal, I imagine, the seer of ghosts saying, "I'm disciplined and not insane."

I gathered up the pages of the letter, reread them quickly, bristling again at my unimaginative handwriting, then folded the pages and put the cameo with them inside of a narrow brown envelope, which I then sealed. I put this envelope in the inside breast pocket of my black blazer. I closed the top button of my white dress shirt and I adjusted my simple red silk tie. Alfred, the snappy dresser. Alfred, worthy to be a subject in the Vampire Chronicles. Alfred, dressed for begging to be allowed in.

I sat back again, listening. No Goblin. Where was Goblin? I felt an aching loneliness for him. I felt the emptiness of the night air. He was waiting for me to hunt, waiting for the fresh blood. But I had no intention of hunting tonight, even though I was faintly hungry. I was going into New Orleans. I was going, perhaps, to my death.

Goblin couldn't guess at what was happening. Goblin had never been more than a child. Goblin looked like me, yes, at every stage of my life, but he was forever the infant. Whenever he had grabbed my left hand with his right, the script had been a child's scrawl.

I leaned over and touched the remote control button on the marble desk. The torch dimmed and slowly went out. The darkness came into the Hermitage. The sounds seemed to grow louder: the call of the night heron, the subtle movement of the rank dark waters, the scurrying of tiny creatures through the tops of the tangled cypress and gum. I could smell the alligators, who were as wary of the island as men. I could smell the fetid heat itself.

The moon was generous and gradually I made out a bit of the sky, which was a bright metallic blue.

The swamp was at its thickest here around the island - the cypresses, a thousand years old, their knobby roots surrounding the shore, their misshapen branches heavy with trailing Spanish moss. It was as if they meant to hide the Hermitage, and perhaps they did.

Only the lightning now and then attacked these old sentinels. Only the lightning was fearless of the legends that said some evil dwelt on Sugar Devil Island: go there and you might never come back.

I'd been told about those legends when I was fifteen. And at twenty-two I heard it all repeated, but vanity and fascination had drawn me to the Hermitage, to the pure mystery of it - this strong two-story house, and the nearby inexplicable mausolem - and now there was no real later. There was only this immortality, this brimming power which shut me off from actuality or time. A man in a pirogue would take a good hour to navigate his way out of here, picking through the tree roots, and back to the landing at the foot of the high ground where Blackwood Manor stood so arrogant and aloof.

I didn't really love this Hermitage, though I needed it. I didn't love the grim gold-and-granite mausoleum with its strange Roman engravings, though I had to hide inside it from the sun by day. But I did love Golden Shore Manor, with the irrational and possessive love that only great houses can draw from us - houses that say, "I was here before you were born and I'll be here after you"; houses that seem a responsibility as much as a haven of dreams. The history of Golden Shore Manor had as much of a grip on me as its overweening beauty. I'd lived my whole life on Golden Shore Farm and in the Manor, except for my wonderful adventures abroad.

How so many uncles and aunts had managed to leave Golden Shore Manor over the years, I couldn't fathom, but they weren't important to me, those strangers who had gone North and only came home now and then for funerals. The house had me in thrall.

I was debating now. Do I go back, just to walk through the rooms again? Do I go back to seek out the large rear first-floor bedroom where my beloved aunt was just settling into her favorite chair? I did have another cameo in my jacket pocket, one expressly bought for her only nights before in New York, and I should give it to her, shouldn't I? It was a wonderful specimen, one of the finest -. But no. I couldn't manage a partial farewell, could I? I couldn't hint that something might happen to me. I couldn't gleefully descend into mystery, into which I'd already sunk up to my eyeballs: Alfred, the night visitor, Alfred who likes dimly lighted rooms now and shies from lamps as though he suffers from an exotic disease. What good would a partial farewell do for my beloved and gentle aunt?

If I failed tonight, I would be another legend: "That incorrigible Alfred. He went deep into Sugar Devil Swamp, though everybody told him not to; he went to that accursed island Hermitage, and one night he just didn't come back." The fact was, I didn't believe Francis would blast me into infinity. I didn't believe he would do it without letting me tell him my story, all or at least in part. Maybe I was just too young to believe it. Maybe because I'd read the Chronicles so avidly, I felt Francis was as close to me as I was to him.

Madness, most likely. But I was bound and determined to get as near to Francis as I could. From where and how he kept watch over New Orleans I didn't know. When and how often he visited his French Quarter flat I didn't know either. But this letter and the gift of the onyx cameo of myself was to go to that flat tonight.

Finally I got up from the leather-and-gold chair.

I went out of the splendid marble-floored house, and with no more than thought to direct me I let myself rise from the warm earth slowly, experiencing a delicious lightness, until I could see from the cool heights far above the huge long meandering black mass of the swamp, and the lights of the big house shining as if it were a lantern on the smooth grass.

Towards New Orleans I willed myself, using this strangest of powers, the Cloud Gift, traversing the waters of Lake Pontchartrain and moving towards the infamous town house in the Rue Royale, which all Blood Hunters knew was the house of the invincible Lestat.

"One hell of a devil," my Maker had called him, "keeping his properties in his own name though the Silvine is hounding him. He means to outlast them. He's more merciful than I."

_Merciful; that was what I was counting on now. Francis, wherever you are, be merciful. I don't come with disrespect. I need you, as my letter will show._

Slowly I descended, down, down, into the balmy air again, a fleeting shadow to prying eyes if there were any, until I stood in the rear courtyard of the town house, near to the murmuring fountain, looking up at the curving iron stairs that led to Francis' rear door.

All right. I am here. So the rules have been broken. So I'm in the courtyard of the Brat Prince himself. Descriptions came to mind from the pages of the Chronicles, complex as the bougainvillea vine running rampant up the iron columns to the upstairs cast-iron railing. It was like being in a very shrine.

All around me I could hear the brash noises of the French Quarter: the clatter of restaurant kitchens, the happy voices of the inevitable tourists on the pavements. I heard the thinnest sound of the jazz blaring out of doors on Bourbon Street. I heard the creeping rumble of cars passing sluggishly in front.

The little courtyard itself was tight and beautiful; the sheer height of its brick walls caught me off guard. The glistening green banana trees were the biggest I'd ever seen, their waxy stalks buckling the purple flagstones here and there. But this was no abandoned place. Someone had been here to clip the dead leaves from the banana groves. Someone had taken away the shriveled bananas that always wither in New Orleans before they ripen. Someone had cut back the abundant roses so that the patio itself was clear. Even the water gurgling from the conch in the stone cherub's hand down into the basin of the fountain was fresh and these sweet little details made me feel all the more like a trespasser, but I was too damned foolishly passionate to be afraid.

Then I saw a light shining through the rear windows above, a very dim light, as if from a lamp deep in the flat.

That did frighten me, but again the all-possessing madness in me mounted. Would I get to speak to Francis himself? And what if, catching sight of me he uses the Fire gift without hesitating. The letter, the onyx cameo, my bitter pleas wouldn't have a chance

I should have grabbed her up and kissed her. My aunt. I should have mande a speach to her, I was about to die

I hurried up the curving iron stairs, careful not to make a sound. And once I reached the rear balcony, I caught the distinct scent of a human being inside. A human being. What did this mean? I stopped and sent the Mind Gift before me to search out the rooms.

At once a confusing message reached me. There was a human there, no doubt of it, and he was furtive, this one, moving in haste, painfully conscious of the fact that he had no right to be where he was. And this someone, this human, knew that I was here as well.

For a moment, I didn't know what to do. Trespassing, I had caught an intruder in the act. A strange protective feeling flooded me. This person had invaded Lestat's property. How dare he? What sort of a bumbler was he? And how did he know that I was here, and that my mind had searched his?

In fact, this strange unwelcome being had a Mind Gift that was almost as strong as mine. I sounded for his name and he yielded it up to me: Oliver, my old friend, from the Silvine.

Alfred, he said, softly. But what did he know of me? It had been years since I had set eyes on Oliver. Did he sense already the change that had been worked in me? Could he tell such a thing with his quick telepathy? Dear God, I had to banish it from my own mind. There was time to get out of this, time to go back to the Hermitage and leave Stirling to his furtive investigation, time to flee before he knew just what I'd become.

Yeah, leave - and now - and let him think I'd become a common mortal reader of the Chronicles, and come back when he's nowhere in sight.

But I couldn't leave. I was too lonely. I was too hell-bent on confrontation. That was the perfect truth. And here was Oliver, and here was the entranceway perhaps to Francis' heart.

I opened the unlocked back door of the flat and I went inside. I paused for only a breathless second in the dark elegant rear parlor, glancing at its roaring Impressionist paintings, and then I went down the corridor past the obviously empty bedrooms and found Oliver in the front room - a most formal drawing room, crowded with gilded furniture, and with its lace-covered windows over the street.

Oliver stood at the tall bookcase to the left side, and there was an open book in his hand. He merely looked at me as I stepped into the light of the overhead chandelier.

What did he see? For the moment I didn't seek to find out. I was too busy looking at him, and realizing how much I loved him still for those times when I was the eighteen-year-old boy who saw spirits, and that he looked much the same as he had in those days - soft gray hair combed back loose from his high forehead and receding temples, large sympathetic greyeyes. He seemed no older than sixty-odd years, as if age hadn't touched him, his body still slender and healthy, tricked out in a white-and-blue seersucker suit.

Only gradually, though it must have been a matter of seconds, did I realize he was afraid. He was looking up at me - on account of my height just about everybody looks up at me - and for all his seeming dignity, and he did have plenty of that, he could see the changes in me, but he wasn't sure what had happened. He knew only that he felt instinctive and mindful fear.

Now, I am a Blood Hunter who can pass for human but not necessarily with someone as savvy as this man was. And then we had the question of telepathy, though I'd done my best to close up my mind the way my Maker had told me, that by simple will, it could be done.

"Alfred" said Stirling. "What's wrong with you?" The soft British accent took me back four and a half years in a finger snap.

"Everything's wrong with me, Oliver," I answered before I could rein myself in. "But why are you here?" Then I came right to the point like the blunderer I was. "Do you have Francis' permission to be in this flat?"

"No," he said immediately. "I must confess I don't have it. And what about you, Alfred" His voice was full of concern. "Why are you here?"

He shoved the book back into place on the shelf and took a step towards me, but I stepped back into the shadows of the hall.

I almost buckled on account of his kindness. But another inevitable element had come sharply into play. His sweet delectable human scent was strong, and suddenly I saw him divorced from all I knew of him. I saw him as prey.

In fact, I felt the immense impossible gulf that now divided us, and I was hungry for him, hungry as if his kindness would pour into me in his very blood.

But Olivergwas no Evil Doer. Oliver wasn't game. I was losing my fledgling mind as I looked at him. My acute loneliness was driving me. My hunger was bedeviling me. I wanted both to feast on him and tell him all my woes and griefs.

"Don't come close to me, Oliver," I said, struggling to sound self-possessed. "You shouldn't be here. You have no right to be here. If you're so damned clever, why didn't you just come by day, when Francis couldn't stop you?"

he scent of the blood was driving me crazy, that and my savage desire to close the gap between us, by murder or by love.

"I don't fully know the answer to that, Alfred" he said, his british accent formal and eloquent enough his tone was not. "But you're the last person I expected to find here, Alfred. Let me look at you, please."

I was shaking. "Oliver, don't try to charm me with that old easy manner," I pressed on. "You might find someone else here who's a lot more dangerous to you than I am. Or don't you believe Francis'stories? Don't tell me you think his vampires exist only in books."

"You're one of them," he said softly. He frowned but the frown cleared in a moment. "Is this Francis' handiwork? He brought you over?"

I was amazed at his boldness, polite as it was. But then he was so much older than me, so used to a graceful authority, and I was painfully young. Again, in waves I felt the old love for him, the old need of him, and again it was fusing perfectly, and stupidly, with my thirst.

"It wasn't Francis' doing," I said. "In fact, he had nothing to do with it. I came here looking for him, Oliver, and now this has happened, this little tragedy that I've run into you."

"A tragedy?"

"What else can it be, Oliver? You know who I am. You know where I live. You know all about my family at the manor."

My vision was blurring. I heard myself speaking:

"Don't try to tell me that if I let you go, the Silvine wouldn't come looking for me. Don't try to tell me that you and your cohorts wouldn't be prowling about in search of me. I know what would happen. This is god-awful, Oliver."

His fear quickened, but he was struggling not to give in to it. And my hunger was becoming uncontrollable. If I let it go, if I let it play itself out, the act would seem inevitable, and seeming inevitable was all that conscience needed; but that just couldn't happen, not to Oliver. I was hopelessly confused.

Before I realized what I was doing, I moved closer to him. I could see the blood in him now as well as smell it. And he made a fatal misstep. That is, he moved backwards, as if he couldn't stop himself from doing it, and he seemed in that gesture to be more the victim than ever. That backwards step caused me to advance.

"Oliver, you shouldn't have come here," I said. "You're an invader." But I could hear the flatness of my voice in my hunger, the meaninglessness of the words. Invader, invader, invader.

"You can't harm me, Alfred" he said, his voice very level and reasonable, "you wouldn't do it. There's too much between us. I've always understood you. I've always understood Goblin. Are you going to betray all that now?"

"It's an old debt," I said, my voice having fallen to a whisper.

I knew I was in the bright light of the chandelier now, and he could see the subtle enhancement of the transformation. The transformation was very fancy, so very fancy. And it seemed to me in my demented state that the fear in him had increased to silent panic and that the panic was sharpening the fragrance of the blood.

Do dogs smell fear? Vampires smell it. Vampires count on it. Vampires find it savory. Vampires can't resist it.

"It's wrong," he said, but he too was whispering as though my very stare had weakened him, which it can certainly do to mortals, and he knew there was no point to a fight. "Don't do it, my boy," he said, the words barely audible.

I found myself reaching out for his shoulder, and when my fingers touched him I felt an electricity that shot through my limbs. Crush him. Crush his bones, but first and foremost swallow his soul in the blood.

"Don't you realize. . ." He trailed off, and out of his mind I subtracted the rest, that the Silvine would be further inflamed, that it would be bad for everyone. The vampires, the Blood Hunters, the Children of the Millennia had all left New Orleans. Scattered in the dark were the vampires. It was a truce. And now I meant to shatter it!

"But they don't know me, you see," I said, "not in this form, they don't. Only you do, my old friend, and that's the horror. You know me, and that's why this has to come about."

I bent down, close to him, and kissed the side of his throat. My friend, my deepest friend in all the world once. And now we'll have this union. Lust old and new. The boy I'd been loving him. I felt the blood pushing through the artery. My left arm slid beneath his right arm. Don't hurt him. He couldn't get away from me. He didn't even try.

"This will be painless, Oliver," I whispered. I sank my teeth cleanly, and the blood filled my mouth very slowly, and with it there came the sudden course of his life and dreams.

Innocent. The word burned through the pleasure. In a luminous drift of figures and voices he emerged, pushing his way through the crowd; Stirling, the man, pleading with me in my mental vision, saying Innocent. There I was, the boy of that old time, and Oliver saying Innocent. I couldn't stop what had begun.

It was someone else who did that for me.

I felt an iron grip on my shoulder and I was whipped back away from Oliver, and Oliver staggered, almost falling, and then he tripped and sank down sideways into a chair at the desk.

I was slammed against the bookcase. I lapped at the blood on my lip and I tried to fight the dizziness. The chandelier appeared to be rocking, and the colors of the paintings on the wall were afire.

A firm hand was placed against my chest to steady me and to hold me back.

And then I realized I was looking at Francis.


	3. Francis Bonnefoy

Quickly I regained my balance. His eyes were on me and I didn't have the slightest intention of looking away. Nevertheless, I looked him up and down because I couldn't help it, and because he was as breathtaking as he has always described himself to be, and I had to see him, truly see him, even if he was to be the last thing I ever saw.

His skin was a pale golden that offset his violet blue eyes wonderfully, and his hair was a true mane of yellow, tousled and curling just above his shoulders. He was staring at me, golden eyebrows scowling slightly, waiting perhaps for me to regain my senses; I honestly didn't know.

Quickly I realized he was wearing the black velvet jacket with the cameo buttons that had been his costume in the Chronicle called Angleterre, each little cameo almost certainly of onyx, the coat itself very fancy with its pinched waist and flaring skirt. His linen shirt was open at the throat; his gray pants weren't important and neither were his black boots.

What engraved itself into my consciousness was his face - square and taut, the eyes very big and the well-shaped mouth voluptuous, and the jaw somewhat hard, the whole more truly well proportioned and appealing than he could ever have claimed.

In fact, his own descriptions of himself didn't do him justice because his looks, though certainly a handful of obvious blessings, were ignited by a potent inner fire.

He wasn't staring at me with hatred. He wasn't steadying me anymore with his hand.

I cursed myself, from the pit of my heart, that I was taller than he was, that he was in fact looking up at me. Maybe he'd cheerfully obliterate me on that account alone.

"The letter," I stammered. "The letter!" I whispered, but though my hand groped, and my mind groped, I couldn't reach inside my coat for the letter. I was wobbling in fear.

And as I stood there shivering and sweating, he reached inside my jacket and withdrew the envelope. Flash of sparkling fingernails.

"This is for me, is it, Alfred Jones?" he asked. His voice had a touch of the French accent, no more. He smiled suddenly and he looked as if he couldn't hurt anyone for the world. He was too attractive, too friendly, too young. But the smile vanished as quickly as it had come.

"Yes," I said. Or rather it was a stutter. "The letter, please read it." I faltered, then pressed on. "Before you. . . make up your mind."

He tucked the letter into his own inside pocket and then he turned to Stirling, who sat dazed and silent, eyes cloudy, his hands clinging to the back of the chair before the desk. The back was like a shield in front of him, though a useless one as I well knew.

Francis' eyes fixed on me again:

"We don't feed on members of the Silvine, Little Brother," he said. "But you" - he looked at Oliver - "you nearly got what you almost deserve."

Oliver stared forward, plainly unable to answer, and only shook his head.

"Why did you come here, Oliver?" Francis asked him.

Again, Oliver merely shook his head. I saw the tiny drops of blood on his starched white collar. I felt an overwhelming shame, a shame so deep and painful it filled me completely, banishing even the faintest aftertaste of the attempted feast.

I went silently crazy.

Oliver had almost died, and for my thirst. Oliver was alive. Oliver was in danger now, danger from Francis. Behold: Francis, like a blaze in front of me. Yes, he could pass for human, but what a human - magnetic and charged with energy as he continued to take command.

"Oliver, I'm talking to you," Francis said in a soft yet imperious tone. He picked up Oliver by the lapels and, moving him clumsily to the far corner of the parlor, he flung him down into a large satin upholstered wing chair.

Oliver looked the worse for it - who wouldn't? - still unable apparently to focus his gaze.

Francis sat down on the velvet couch very near him. I was completely forgotten for the moment, or so I assumed.

"Oliver," said Francis, "I'm asking you. What made you come into my house?"

"I don't know," said Oliver. He glanced up at me and then at the figure who was questioning him, and I struggled, because I couldn't help it, to see what he was seeing - this vampire whose skin still glowed though it was tanned, and whose eyes were prismatic and undeniably fierce.

The fabled beauty of Francis seemed potent as a drug. And the crowning light of the chandelier was merciless or splendid depending entirely on one's point of view.

"Yes, you do know why you came here," said Francis, his voice subdued, the French accent no more than a beguiling taste. "It wasn't enough for the Silvine to drive me out of the city. You have to come into those places that belong to me?"

"I was wrong to do it," Oliver said. It was spoken in a sigh. He scowled and pressed his lips together hard. "I shouldn't have done it." For the first time he looked directly into Francis' eyes.

Francis glanced up at me.

Sitting forward he reached over and slipped his fingers behind Oliver's bloodstained collar, startling Oliver and glaring up at me.

"We don't spill blood when we feed, Little Brother," he said with a passing mischievous smile. "You have much to learn."

The words hit me rather like a wallop and I found myself speechless. Did this mean that I'd walk out of here alive?

Don't kill Oliver, that's what I was thinking; and then suddenly Francis, as he still stared at me, made a short little laugh.

"Alfred, turn that chair around," he said, gesturing to the desk, "and sit down. You make me nervous standing there. You're too damned tall. And you're making Oliver nervous as well."

I felt a great rush of relief, but as I tried to do what he'd told me to do my hands were shaking so badly that I was again full of shame. Finally, I managed to sit down facing the pair of them, but a polite distance away.

Oliver made a small frown as he looked at me, but it was entirely sympathetic and he was still obviously off base. I hadn't drunk enough blood to account for his dizziness. It was the act of it, the drawing on his heart. That, and the fact that Francis had come, Francis had interrupted us, Francis was here and he was demanding again of Oliver, Why had Oliver come into the flat?

"You could have come here by day," said Francis, addressing Oliver in an even voice. "I have human guards from sunup to sundown but the Silvine is good at bribing guards. Why didn't you take the hint that I look after my properties myself once the sun has set? You disobeyed the directive of your own Superior General. You disobeyed your own common sense."

Oliver nodded, eyes veering off, as if he had no argument, and then in a weak but dignified voice he said:

_"The door was unlocked."_

"Don't insult me," said Francis, his voice still patient and even. "It's my house."

Again, Oliver appeared to meet Francis' gaze. He looked at him steadily and then he spoke in a more coherent voice.

"I was wrong to do it, and you've caught me. Yes, I've disobeyed the directive of the Superior General, that's true. I came because I couldn't resist it. I came because perhaps I didn't quite believe in you. I didn't believe in spite of all I'd read and been told."

Francis shook his head disapprovingly and again there came that short little laugh.

"I expect that credulity of mortal readers of the Chronicles," he said. "I expect it even of fledglings like Little Brother here. But I don't expect it of the Silvine, who have so ceremoniously declared war on us."

"For what it's worth," said Oliver, gathering his strength somewhat, "I was not for that war. I voted against it as soon as I heard of the declaration. I was for closing the Motherhouse here in Louisiana, if need be. But then. . . I was for accepting our losses and retreating to our libraries abroad."

"You drove me out of my own city," said Francis. "You question my neighbors in these precincts. You rummage through all my public property titles and records. And now you trespass, and you say it was because you didn't believe? That's an excuse but not a reason."

"The reason was I wanted to see you," said Oliver, his voice growing stronger. "I wanted what others in the Order have had. I wanted to see you with my own eyes."

"And now that you have seen me," Francis replied, "what precisely will you do?" He glanced at me again, a flash of brilliant eyes and a smile that was gone in an instant as he looked back to the man in the chair.

"What we always do," said Oliver. "Write about it, put it into a report to the Elders, copy it to the File on the Vampire Francis - that is, if you let me leave here, if that's your choice."

"I haven't harmed any of you, have I?" Francis asked. "Think on it. When have I harmed a true and active member of the Silvine? Don't blame me for what others have done. And since your warlike declaration, since you sought to drive me right out of my home, I've shown remarkable restraint."

"No, you haven't," Oliver quietly replied.

I was shocked.

"What do you mean?" Francis demanded. "What on earth can you mean? I think I've been a gentleman about it." He smiled at Oliver for the first time.

"Yes, you've been a gentleman," Oliver responded. "But I hardly think you've been restrained."

"Do you know how it affects me to be driven out of New Orleans?" Francis asked, voice still tempered. "Do you know how it affects me to know I can't wander the French Quarter for fear of your spies in the Caf du Monde, or wander the Rue Royale with the evening shoppers, just because one of your glorified gossips might be wandering about too? Do you know how it wounds me to leave behind the one city in the world with which I'm truly in love?"

Oliver roused himself at these words. "But haven't you always been too clever for us?" he asked.

"Well, of course," Francis rejoined with a shrug.

"Besides," Oliver went on, "you haven't been driven out. You've been here. You've been seen by our members, sitting very boldly in the Caf du Monde, I might add, presiding over a hot cup of useless caf au lait."

I was stunned.

"Oliver!" I whispered. "For the love of Christ, don't argue."

Again Francis looked at me, but not with anger. He returned to Oliver.

Oliver hadn't finished. He went on firmly: "You still feed off the riffraff," he said. "The authorities don't care, but we recognize the patterns. We know it's you."

I was mortified. How could Oliver talk like this?

Francis broke into an irrepressible laugh.

"And even so, you came by night?" he demanded. "You dared to come, knowing I might find you here?"

"I think. . ." Oliver hesitated, then went on. "I think I wanted to challenge you. I think, as I said, that I committed a sin of pride."

Thank God for this confession, I thought. "Committed a sin" - really good words. I was quaking, watching the two of them, appalled by Stirling's fearless tone.

"We respect you," said Oliver, "more than you deserve."

I gasped.

"Oh, do explain that to me!" said Francis, smiling. "In what form comes this respect, I should like to know. If I'm truly in your debt, I should like to say thanks."

"St. Elizabeth's," said Oliver, his voice rolling gracefully now, "the building where you lay for so many years, sleeping on the chapel floor. We've never sought to enter it or discover what goes on there. And as you said we're very good at bribing guards. Your Chronicles made your sleep famous. And we knew that we could penetrate the building. We could glimpse you in the daylight hours, unprotected, lying on the marble. What a lure that was - the sleeping vampire who no longer bothered with the trappings of a coffin. A dark deadly inverse of the sleeping King Arthur, waiting for England to need him again. But we never crept into your enormous lodgings. As I said, I think we respected you more than you deserve."

I shut my eyes for an instant, certain of disaster.

But Francis only broke into another fit of chuckling and laughing.

"Sheer nonsense," he said. "You and your members were afraid. You never came near St. Elizabeth's night or day because you were plainly afraid of the ancient ones among us who could have put out your light like a match. You were afraid too of the rogue vampires who came prowling, the ones who wouldn't respect the name Silvine enough to give you a wide berth. As for the daylight hours, you had no clue what you'd find - what high-paid thugs might have terminated you and buried you under the concrete basement floor. It was a purely practical matter."

Oliver narrowed his eyes. "Yes, we did have to be careful," he conceded. "Nevertheless, there were times -."

"Foolishness," said Francis. "In point of pure fact, my infamous sleep ended before your declaration of war on us was made. And what if I did show myself sitting 'very boldly' in the Caf du Monde! How dare you use the word 'boldly'? You imply I don't have the right!"

"You feed on your fellow human beings," said Oliver calmly. "Have you seriously forgotten that?"

I was frantic. Only the smile on Francis' face reassured me that Oliver wasn't headed for certain death.

"No, I never forget what I do," said Francis equably. "But surely you don't mean to take on the whole question of what I do now for my own survival! And you must remember, I'm not a human being - far from it, and farther from it with every passing adventure and every passing year. I've been to Heaven and to Hell; let me ask you to remember that."

Francis paused as though he himself were remembering this, and Oliver tried to answer but plainly could not. Francis pressed on in a measured voice:

"I've been in a human body and recovered this body you see before you. I've been the consort of a creature whom others called a goddess. And yes, I feed off my fellow human beings because it's my nature, and you know it, and you know what care I take with every mortal morsel, that it be tainted and vicious and unfit for human life. The point I was trying to make is that your declaration against us was ill conceived."

"I agree with you; it was a foolish Declaration of Enmity. It should never have been put forth."

"Declaration of Enmity, is that what you called it?" Francis asked.

"I think those are the official words," said Oliver. "We've always been an authoritarian order. In fact, we don't know much about democracy at all. When I spoke of my vote, I was speaking of a symbolic voice rather than a literal one. Declaration of Enmity, yes, those were the words. It was a rather misguided and naive thing."

"Ah, misguided and naive," Francis repeated. "I like that. And it might do you good, all of you in the Silvine, to remember that you're a pretentious bunch of meddlers, and your Elders are no better than the rest of you."

Oliver seemed to be relaxing, mildly fascinated, but I couldn't relax. I was too afraid of what might happen at any moment.

"I have a theory about the Declaration of Enmity," Oliver said.

"Which is?" asked Francis.

"I think the Elders thought in their venerable minds, and God knows, I don't really know their venerable minds, that the Declaration would bring certain of our members back to us who had been inducted into your ranks."

"Oh, that's lovely." Francis laughed. "Why are you mincing words like this? Is it on account of the boy?"

"Yes, perhaps I mince words because of him," Oliver answered, "but honestly, we members of the Silvine think in language such as this."

"Well, for your records and your files," Francis said, "we don't have ranks. In fact, I'd say that as a species we are given to rigidly individual personalities and obdurate differences, and peculiar mobility as to matters of friendship and company and meeting of minds. We come together in small covens and then are driven wildly apart again. We know little lasting peace with each other. We have no ranks."

This was intriguing and my fear melted just a little as Oliver came back in his careful polite voice.

"I understand that," he said. "But to return to the question at hand, as to why the Elders made this warlike declaration, I think they honestly believed that those vampires who had once been part of us might come to try to reason with us, and we might benefit thereby in meeting with actual beings such as yourself. We might carry our knowledge of you to a higher realm."

"It was all scholastic is what you're saying," said Francis.

"Yes. And surely you must realize what it has meant for us to lose three members to your collective power, whatever the cause of it, and no matter how it was accomplished. We were stunned by each defection, and mystified as to the dialogue, if any, that might have preceded what happened. We wanted to learn, you see. We wanted. . . to know."

"Well, it didn't work, did it?" said Francis, his calm demeanor unchanged. "And you weren't content with the Chronicles alone, were you? They told you all about the dialogue. But you and the Elders wanted this eye-to-eye view."

"No, it didn't work," said Oliver, and he seemed now to be possessed of his full dignity and strength. His gray eyes were clear. "On the contrary, we provoked from you more audacity. You dared to publish a Chronicle using the name Arthur Kirkland. You dared to do this even though a great family by the name of Kirkland lives in this city and its environs to this day. You had no care when you did that."

I felt a sharp stab in my heart. My own beloved Kirkland flashed before my eyes. But here was Oliver being positively reckless again.

"Audacity!" said Francis, his smile broadening as he glared at Oliver. "You accuse me of audacity! You're living and breathing now entirely because I want it."

"No doubt of it, but you are audacious," insisted Oliver.

I was about to faint.

"Audacious and proud of it," Francis fired back. "But let's get one thing straight. I am not the sole author of the Chronicles. Blame your own versatile Roderich Edelstein for the Chronicle of Arthur Kirkland. It was Roderich's story to tell. Arthur wanted the Dark Gift. Arthur Kirkland was a warlock before he was ever a vampire. Who should know that better than you? There was no lie there. And it was Roderich's choice to use his name, as well as the name of the Silvine, I might add. What is all of this to me?"

"He wouldn't have done it without your blessing," said Oliver with astonishing confidence.

"You think not?" demanded Francis. "And why should I care about some mortal family of witches and warlocks? The Kirklands, what are they to me? And what is a great family, pray tell, a rich family? Vampires loathe witches and such like, whether they're rich or poor. Anyone who reads the story of Arthur Kirkland can see why. Not that Arthur isn't anything but a prince among us now. Besides, our eager readers think it's all fiction, and how do you know what's real and what's not?"

I wept inside thinking of my red-haired Kirkland! And on they talked.

"Thank God your readers think it's fiction," said Oliver, becoming faintly more heated, "and the Kirkland family is unaware of the truths you told; and a great family is one that has survived the ages, and treasures bonds of love. What else? You seek a family, always and everywhere. I see it in your Chronicles."

"Stop, I won't listen to you," said Francis sharply but without raising his voice. "I'm not here to be judged by you. You've had corruption in your ranks. You know you have. And I know full well myself. And now I find that you're corrupt, disobeying your Elders to come here. You think I'd give you the Dark Blood?"

"I don't want it," said Oliver in suppressed amazement. "I don't seek it. I wanted to see you, and hear your voice."

"And now you have, and what will you do?"

"I told you. Write about it. Confess to the Elders. Describe it all."

"Oh, no you won't," said Francis. "You'll leave out one key part."

"And what is that?" asked Oliver.

"You're such an admirable bunch," said Francis, shaking his head. "You can't guess what part?"

"We try to be admirable," said Oliver. "I'll be condemned by the Elders. I might even be removed from Louisiana, though I doubt it. I have other important work to do."

Again, there came that stab in my heart. I thought of the "great family of Kirkland." I thought of my red-haired love, my Kirkland witch, whom I would never see again. Was that his important work? I wished with all my heart I could ask him.

Francis appeared to be studying Oliver, who had fallen silent, staring at Francis, perhaps doing that little mental trick of memorizing all the details about which he would write later on. Members of the Silvine were especially trained to do it.

I tried to scan his mind, but I couldn't get in, and I didn't dare to try with Francis. He would know.

Francis broke the silence.

"Revoke it, this Declaration of Enmity," he said.

Oliver was startled. He thought for a moment and then he said:

"I can't do that. I'm not one of the Elders. I can tell them that you asked me to revoke the Declaration. That's all I can do."

Francis' eyes softened. They drifted over Oliver and then to me. For a long moment Francis and I looked at each other, and then I weakened and looked politely away.

I had glimpsed something as we looked at each other.

It was something I'd never heard mentioned in the Chronicles - a shade of difference between Francis' eyes. One eye was almost imperceptibly larger than the other, and colored by a little blood. I'm not sure that as a mortal I could have detected such a small difference. I was confused by having seen it now. If Francis counted it as a flaw, he would hate me for seeing it.

Francis was gazing at Oliver.

"We'll make a deal, you and I," he said.

"I'm relieved to hear it," Oliver said. It had the same gentle arrogance of his earlier remarks.

"It's a simple bargain," said Francis, "but if you refuse me, or if you go against me, I'll go against you. I could have done that before now, I'm sure you know."

"Roderich Edelstein won't let you hurt us," said Oliver with quiet spunk. "And there's an old one, an ancient one, one of the grandest in your tales, and she, the great authority, won't let you harm us either, isn't that so?"

"Oliver!" I whispered before I could stop myself.

But Francis seemed only to weigh this for a moment. Then:

"I could still hurt you," he said. "I don't play by anybody's rules but my own. As for the ancient ones, don't be so sure they want to govern. I think they want utter privacy and complete peace."

Oliver reflected, then said quickly, "I see your point."

"You despise me now, don't you?" Francis asked with engaging sincerity.

"Not at all," was Oliver's quick reply. "On the contrary, I see your charm. You know I do. Tell me about this bargain. What do you want me to do?"

"First off, go back to your Elders and tell them that this Declaration of Enmity must be officially withdrawn. It doesn't matter that much to me but it matters to others, and besides, I know that if you swear honorably to be no more than observers in the future, then you won't annoy us, and with me that counts for a lot. I loathe being annoyed. It makes me feel angry and malicious."

"Very well."

"The second request stems from the first. Leave this boy completely alone. This boy is the key point which you must leave out of your report. Of course you can say that a nameless Blood Drinker assaulted you. You know, have it all make sense and do justice to whatever you think you may have learned here. I anticipate your inevitable fascination with all that. But this boy's anonymity must become a point of honor. . . and there's more."

Oliver was silent.

"You know his name," said Francis, "you know where he lives, you know his family. All that was plain to me before I interrupted him in his bumbling attack on you. Now you know that he's one of us, as the expression goes. You must not only leave him out of your records, you must leave him completely and utterly alone."

Oliver held Francis gaze for a moment and then he nodded.

"You move against this boy," said Francis, "you try to take up your combative posture where he is concerned, and as God is my witness, I'll wipe you out. I'll kill all of you. I'll leave you nothing but your empty libraries and your overflowing vaults. I'll start in the Motherhouse in Louisiana and then I'll move to the Motherhouses all over the world. It's a cinch for me to do it. I'll pick you off one at a time. Even if the ancients do rise to protect you, it won't happen immediately, and what I can do immediately is an enormous amount of harm."

I went from fear to astonishment.

"I understand you," said Oliver. "Of course you want him protected. Thank heaven for that."

"I pray that you do understand me," said Francis. He glanced at me again. "This is a young one, an innocent one, and I'll make the decision as to whether he survives or not."

I think Oliver let out a little gasp.

As for me there came a flood of relief again, and then another wave of intelligent fear.

Francis gestured to Oliver.

"Need I add that you're to get out of here now and never trespass on my property again?" he asked.

Oliver rose at once, and so did I. He looked at me, and there came over me again the total realization that I'd almost ended his life tonight, and a recurrence of terrible shame.

"Good-bye, my friend," I said in as strong a voice as I could muster. I reached awkwardly for his hand and held it firmly. He looked at me and his face softened.

"Alfred," he said, "my brave Alfred."

He turned.

"Farewell, Francis Bonnefoy," he said. "I think I understate my case when I say I'm deeply in your debt."

"You do but I find ingrates all around me eternally," said Francis, smiling slyly. "Go on, Oliver. It's a good thing you have one of your prowling limousines waiting for you only a couple of blocks from here. I don't think you're up to walking far or driving a car by yourself."

"Right you are," said Oliver, and then with no further words he hurried down the hallway and out the back door, and I heard his heavy rapid steps on the iron stairs.

Francis had also risen, and he came towards me and gestured for me to sit down again. He took my head in both his hands. There was no dreadful pressure; there was no pain. It was gentle, the manner in which he was holding me.

But I was too afraid to do anything but look up into his eyes quietly, and again I saw that small difference, that one eye was larger than the other by not even a fraction of an inch. I tried to repress the mere thought of it. I tried only to think I will do whatever you want of me, and without meaning for it to happen, I closed my eyes as if someone were about to hit me in the face.

"You think I'm going to kill you, don't you?" I heard him say.

"I hope not," I said shakily.

"Come on, Little Brother," he said, "it's time to leave this pretty little place to those who know so much about it. And you, my young friend, have to feed."

And then I felt his arm tight around me. The air was rushing past me. I was clinging to him, though I don't think I needed to, and we were out in the night, and we were moving towards the clouds.


	4. Francis, Meet Goblin

It was like travelling with my Maker - the speed, the altitude and the strong arms holding me. I gave it all of my trust.

And then came the sudden plunge.

I was shaken as he let me go, and I had to stop myself from stumbling until the dizziness passed.

We stood on a terrace. A partially open glass door separated us from a lighted room. It was tastefully furnished in rather routine modern furniture-beige velvet chairs and couches, with the inevitable large television, muted lamps and scattered tables of iron and glass.

Two very pretty young brunette women were inside, one busy with a suitcase on the coffee table, and the other in front of a nearby mirror, brushing her long hair. They wore skimpy silk dresses, both pretty fashionable, revealing a great deal of their dark olive skin.

Francis put his arm around me again and gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze.

"What does your mind tell you?" he whispered.

I let the Mind Gift loose, casting for the one at the mirror, and caught the whisper of murder at once. The other was even more accustomed to it, and it seemed that both of the women were party to a crime that was actually happening now somewhere at a distance from this place.

It was an elegant hotel, this building. Through a door I saw the bedroom. I caught the scent from a gin drink on one of the tables, I caught the scent of fresh flowers, and of course I caught the overwhelming scent of Fair Game.

The thirst rose in me. The thirst clouded my eyes. I tasted blood as though I were already drinking it, and I felt the abysmal and desperate emptiness that I always feel before I feast. Nothing will ever fill you. Nothing will ever make this abominable hunger go away.

"Fair Game exactly," said Francis in a low voice. "But we don't let them suffer, no matter how rough we want to get."

"No, Sir," I answered deferentially. "May I have the one in front of the mirror?"

"Why?" he asked.

"Because I can see her face in the mirror, and she's cruel."

He nodded.

He slipped the door open and we came into the cool refreshing air of the room. The thirst was too hot for it. The thirst was hopeless.

At once, the women cried out in protest. Where had we come from? Who were we? Vulgar words, threats.

With a remnant of my rational mind, I saw that the suitcase was filled with money, but what did it matter? How much more interesting was a huge vase of flowers near the far window, bursting with color. How much more interesting the blood.

Francis drifted past me and caught the woman who ran to the right with both his arms. The rush of furious words from her came to an abrupt stop.

The other woman darted to the sofa, and I saw the gun there that she wanted so desperately to reach. I had her before she could lay her hand on it, and I crushed her against me, looking into her black eyes.

She gave me a string of curses in Spanish, and the thirst in me rose even more violently, as if her curses had drawn it out. I brushed her thick black hair back from her neck and ran my thumb over the artery. She was maddened, full of hatred.

Slowly, I bit into the fount of blood.

My Maker's lessons came back to me. Love her sins, follow the path with her, make her evil your evil and you will do no evil. I struggled to obey as her mind was broken open. I probed for the murders and I found them, rampant, savage and always over the white powder; and the wealth that had drawn her out of the deep filthy slums of her birth to finery and fortune, to those who toasted her beauty and her cunning; and murder after murder of those as covered in blood as herself. Yes, love you, I whispered, love the sheer will and the ever present anger; yes, give it to me, the rage in the warm sweet blood flowing, and suddenly there came, towards me, her unbounded love.

Without language, she said, Surrender. Without language, she said, I see it!, and it was all of her life, without pagination, and her ripened soul expanded, and there was a terrifying recognition of circumstance and inevitability, her crimes pulled up by the roots from her heart as though by the hand of Heaven.

But the hunger in me was sated, I was filled by her, I had had her, and I drew back, kissing the puncture wounds, lapping the tiny trickles of blood that I'd spilled, healing the evidence, even as the drowsiness overcame me and then gently, gently I set her down on one of the indifferent chairs. I kissed her lips.

I knelt down before her. I forced my tongue between her lips and, opening her mouth, I sucked on her tongue and sank my teeth into it delicately, and there came again a small rush of blood.

Finally there was no more.

I closed her large empty eyes with my left fingers. I felt her eyes through their lids as her blood washed through me. The blood sent shock after shock through me. I let her go.

In the usual daze, I turned and saw Francis waiting, the royal figure, studying me, musing it seemed, his yellow hair looking almost white in the lamplight, his violet eyes wide.

"You did it right that time, Little Brother," he said. "You spilled not a single drop."

There was so much I wanted to say. I wanted to talk of her life, the great overreaching scope of it that I had so deeply tasted, the score she kept with fate; and how hard I'd tried to do what my Maker had told me to do, not merely to devour the blood but devour the evil, dip my tongue deep down into the evil, but she was beside the point.

She was a victim. She who had never been a Subject was now Past Tense.

The blood had me. The warmth had me. The room was a phantasm. Francis' woman lay dead on the floor. And there was the suitcase of money, and it meant nothing, could buy nothing, could change nothing, could save no one. The flowers were bold and brilliant, pink lilies dripping with pollen, and dark red roses. The room was complete and final and still.

"No one will mourn them," said Francis softly. His voice seemed distant, beyond my reach. "No need to find a hasty grave."

I thought of my Maker. I thought of the dark waters of Sugar Devil Swamp, the thick duckweed, the voice of the owls.

Something changed in the room, but Francis didn't know it.

"Come back to me," said Francis. "It's important, Little Brother, not to let the blood weaken you afterwards, no matter how sweet it is."

I nodded. But something was happening. We weren't alone.

I could see the dim figure of my double forming behind Francis. I could see Goblin, designed as I was designed. I could see the crazed smile on his face.

Francis pivoted. "Where is he?" he whispered.

"No, Goblin, I forbid it," I said. But there was no stopping him. The figure moved towards me with lightning speed, yet held itself together in human form. Right before my eyes he was seemingly as solid as I was; and then I felt the tingling all through my limbs as he merged with me, and the tiny stabs on my hands and my neck and my face. I struggled as if I were caught in a perfect net.

From deep inside me there came that orgasmic palpitation, that walloping sensation that I was one with him and nothing could part us, that I wanted it suddenly, yes, wanted him and me to be together always, yet I was saying something different.

"Get away from me, Goblin. Goblin, you must listen. I was the one, the one who brought you into being. Listen to me."

But it was useless. The electric shivers wouldn't stop, and I saw only images of the two of us as children, as boys, as men, all of it moving too fast for me to focus, to repudiate or confirm. Sunlight poured through an open doorway; I saw the flowered pattern of linoleum. I heard the laughter of toddlers, and I tasted milk.

I knew I was falling or about to fall, that Francis' firm hands were holding me, because I wasn't in the room with the sunlight, but it was all that I could see, and there was Goblin, little Goblin frolicking and laughing, and I too was laughing. Love you, all right, need you, of course, yours, us together. I looked down and saw my chubby childish left hand, and I held a spoon in it and was banging with the spoon. And there was Goblin's hand on top of mine. And over and over came that bang of the spoon against wood, and the sunlight, how beautifully it came in the door, but the flowers on the linoleum were worn.

Then, as violently as Goblin had come, he withdrew. I glimpsed the humanoid shape for no more than a second, the eyes huge, the mouth open; then his image expanded, lost its conformity and vanished.

The draperies of the room swayed, and the vase of flowers suddenly toppled, and I heard dimly the dripping of the water, and then the vase itself hit the soft rug.

In a fog, I stared at the wounded bouquet of flowers. Pink-throated lilies. I wanted to pick them up. The tiny wounds all over me stung me and hurt me. I hated him that he had made the vase fall over, that the lilies were spilt now on the floor.

I looked at the women, first one and then the other. They appeared to be sleeping. There was no death.

My Goblin, my very own Goblin. That verbless thought stayed with me. My familiar spirit, my partner in all of life; you belong to me and I belong to you.

Francis was holding me by the shoulders. I could barely stand. In fact, if he had let me go I would have fallen. I couldn't take my eyes off the pink-throated lilies.

"He didn't have to make the flowers fall," I said. "I taught him not to hurt things that were pretty. I taught him that when we were small."

"Alfred," said Francis, "come back to me! I'm talking to you. Alfred!"

"You didn't see him," I said. I was shaking all over. I stared at the tiny wounds on my hands, but they were already healing. It was the same way with the pinpricks on my face. I wiped at my face. Faint traces of blood on my fingers.

"I saw the blood," said Francis.

"How did you see it?" I asked. I was growing stronger. I struggled to clear my mind.

"In the shape of a man," Francis said, "a man faintly sketched in blood, sketched in the air, just for an instant, and then there was a swirling cloud of tiny drops, and I saw it pass through the open door as rapidly as if it were being sucked out."

"Then you know why I came looking for you," I said. But I realized he couldn't really see the spirit that Goblin was. He'd seen the blood, yes, because the blood was visible, but the spirit who had always appeared to me was invisible to him.

"It can't really hurt you," he said, his voice tender and kind. "It can't take any real volume of blood from you. It took just a tiny taste of what you took from the woman."

"But he'll come again whenever he wants, and I can't fight him, and each time, I could swear, it's a little more."

I steadied myself, and he released me, stroking my hair with his right hand. That casual gesture of affection coupled with his dazzling appearance - the vibrant eyes, the exquisitely proportioned features - entranced me even as the trance induced by Goblin slowly wore away.

"He found me here," I said, "and I don't even know where I am. He found me here, and he can find me anywhere, and each time, as I told you, he takes a little more blood."

"Surely you can fight him," Francis said, encouragingly.

His expression was concerned and protective, and I felt such an overwhelming need of him and love for him that I was about to cry. I held it back.

"Maybe I can learn to fight him," I said, "but is that enough?"

"Come, let's leave this graveyard," he answered. "You have to tell me about him. You have to tell me how this came about."

"I don't know that I have all the answers," I said. "But I have a story to tell."

I followed him out onto the terrace into the fresh air.

"Let's go to Golden-Shore Manor," I said. "I don't know of another place where we can talk in such peace. Only my aunt is there tonight and her lovable entourage, and maybe my mother, and they'll all leave us completely alone. They're utterly used to me."

"And Goblin?" he asked. "Will he be stronger there if he does come back?"

"He was as strong as ever only moments ago," I responded. "I think that I'll be stronger."

"Then Golden-Shore Manor it is," he said.

Again there came his firm arm around me and we were traveling upwards. The sky spread out, full of clouds, and then we broke through to the very stars.


	5. Meeting the Family

Within moments we found ourselves in front of the big house, and I experienced a flashing sense of embarrassment as I looked at its huge two-story columned portico.

Of course the garden lights were on, brilliantly illuminating the fluted columns to their full height, and all of the many rooms were aglow. In fact, I had a rule on this and had had since boyhood, that at four o'clock all chandeliers in the main house had to be lighted, and though I was no longer that boy in the grip of twilight depression, the chandeliers were illuminated by the same clock.

A quick chuckle from Francis caught me off guard.

"And why are you so embarrassed?" he asked genially, having easily read my mind. "America destroys her big houses. Some of them don't even last a hundred years." His accent lessened. He sounded more intimate. "This place is magnificent," he said casually. "I like the big columns. The portico, the pediment, it's all rather glorious. Perfect Greek Revival style. How can you be ashamed of such things? You're a strange creature, very gentle I think, and out of kilter with your own time."

"Well, how can I belong to it now?" I asked. "Given the Dark Blood and all its wondrous attributes. What do you think?"

I was at once ashamed of having answered so directly, but he merely took it in stride.

"No, but I mean," he said, "you didn't belong to this time before the Dark Gift, did you? The threads of your life, they weren't woven into any certain fabric." His manner seemed simple and friendly.

"I suppose you're right," I responded. "In fact, you're very right."

"You're going to tell me all about it, aren't you?" he asked. His golden eyebrows were very clear against his tanned skin, and he frowned slightly while smiling at the same time. It made him look very clever and loving, though I wasn't sure why.

"You want me to?" I asked.

"Of course I do," he answered. "It's what you want to do and must do, besides." There came that mischievous smile and frown again. "Now, shall we go inside?"

"Of course, yes," I said, greatly relieved as much by his friendly manner as by what he said. I couldn't quite grasp that I had him with me, that not only had I found him but that he was wanting to hear my story; he was at my side.

We went up the six front steps to the marble porch and I opened the door, which, on account of our being out here in the country, was never locked.

The broad central hallway stretched out before us, with its diamond-shaped white-and-black marble tiles running to the rear door, which was identical to the door by which we had just entered.

Partially blocking our view was one of the greatest attributes of Golden-Shore Manor, the spiral stairway, and this drew from Francis a look of pure delight.

The frigid air-conditioning felt good.

"How gorgeous this is," he said, gazing at the stairway with its graceful railing and delicate balusters. He stood in the well of it. "Why, it runs all the way to a third floor, doubling back on itself beautifully."

"The third floor's the attic," I said. "It's a treasure trove of trunks and old furniture. It's yielded some of its little secrets to me."

His eyes moved to the running mural on the hallway walls, a sunshine Italian pastoral giving way to a deep blue sky whose bright color dominated the entire long space and the hall above.

"Ah, now this is lovely," he said, looking up at the high ceiling. "And look at the plaster moldings. Done by hand, weren't they?"

I nodded. "New Orleans craftsmen," I said. "It was the 1880s, and my great-great-great-grandfather was fiercely romantic and partially insane."

"And this drawing room," he said, peering through the arched doorway to his right. "It's full of old furniture, fine furniture. What do you call it, Alfred? Rococo? It fills me with a dreamy sense of the past."

Again, I nodded. I had gone rapidly from embarrassment to an embarrassing sense of pride. All my life people had capitulated to Golden-Shore Manor. They had positively raved about it, and I wondered now that I had been so mortified. But this being, this strangely compelling and handsome individual into whose hands I'd put my very life, had grown up in a castle, and I had feared he would laugh at what he saw.

On the contrary, he seemed thrilled by the golden harp and the old Pleyel piano. He glanced at the huge somber portrait of Axellion Jones, my venerable ancestor. And then slowly he turned enthusiastically to the dining room on the other side of the hall.

I made a motion for him to enter.

The antique crystal chandelier was showering a wealth of light on the long table, a table which could seat some thirty people, made especially for the room. The gilded chairs had only recently been re-covered in green satin damask, and the green and gold was repeated in the wall-to-wall carpet, with a gold swirl on a green ground. Gilded sideboards, inset with green malachite, were ranged between the long windows on the far wall.

A need to apologize stole over me again, perhaps because Francis seemed lost in his judgment of the place.

"It's so unnecessary, Golden-Shore Manor," I told him. "And with Aunt Lily and me its only regular inhabitants, I have the feeling that someone will come and make us turn it over for some more sensible use. Of course there are other members of the family - and then there's the staff, who are so damned rich in their own right that they don't have to work for anybody." I broke off, ashamed of rambling.

"And what would a more sensible use be?" he asked in the same comfortable manner he had adopted before. "Why should the house not be your gracious home?"

He was looking at the huge portrait of Aunt Lily when she was young - a smiling girl in a sleeveless white beaded evening gown that might have been made yesterday rather than seventy years ago, as it was; and at another portrait - of Virginia Lee Jones, Axellion's wife, the first lady ever to live in Golden-Shore Manor.

It was murky now, this portrait of Virginia Lee, but the style was robust and faintly emotional, and the woman herself, blond with eyes of blue, was very honest to look at, and modest, and smiling, with small features and an undeniably pretty face. She was dressed ornately in the style of the 1880s, in a high-necked dress of sky blue with long sleeves puckered at the shoulders, and her hair heaped on the top of her head. She had been the grandmother of Aunt Lily, and I always saw a certain likeness in these portraits, in the eyes and the shape of the faces, though others claimed they could not. But then. . .

And they had more than casual associations for me, these portraits, especially that of Virginia Lee. Aunt Lily I had still with me. But Virginia Lee. . . I shuddered but repressed those alien memories of ghosts and grotesqueness. Too much was taking my mind by storm.

"Yes, why not your home, and the repository of your ancestors' treasures?" Francis remarked innocently. "I don't understand."

"Well, when I was growing up," I said in answer to his question, "my grandma and grandpa were living then, and this was a sort of hotel. A bed-and-breakfast was what they called it. But they served dinner down here in the dining room as well. Lots of tourists came up this way to spend some time in it. We still have the Christmas banquet every year, with singers who stand on the staircase for the final caroling, while the guests gather here in the hall. It all seems very useful at times like that. This last year I had a midnight Easter banquet as well, just so I could attend it."

A sense of the past shook me, frightening me with its vitality. I pressed on, guiltily trying to wring something from the earliest memories. What right had I to good times now, or memories?

"I love the singers," I said. "I used to cry with my grandparents when the soprano sang 'O Holy Night.' Golden-Shore Manor seems powerful at such times - a place to alter people's lives. You can tell I'm still very caught up in it."

"How does it alter people's lives?" he asked quickly, as if the idea had hooked him.

"Oh, there's been so many weddings here." My voice caught. Weddings. A hideous memory, a recent memory overshot all, a shameful awful memory -blood, her gown, the taste of it - but I forced it out of my mind. I went on:

"I remember lovely weddings, and anniversary banquets. I remember a picnic on the lawn for an elderly man who had just turned ninety. I remember people coming back to visit the site where they'd been married." Again came that stabbing recollection - a bride, a bride covered in blood. My head swam.

_You little fool, you've killed her. You weren't supposed to kill her, and look at her white dress._

I wouldn't think of it yet. I couldn't be crippled with it yet. I'd confess it all to Francis, but not yet.

I had to continue. I stammered. I managed.

"Somewhere there's an old guest book with a broken quill pen crushed in it, full of comments by those who came and went and came again. They're still coming. It's a flame that hasn't gone out."

He nodded and smiled faintly as though this pleased him. He looked again at the portrait of Virginia Lee.

A vague shimmer passed over me. Had the portrait changed? Vague imaginings that her lovely blue eyes looked down at me. But she would never come to life for me now, would she? Of course she wouldn't. Hers had been a famous virtue and magnanimity. What would she have to do with me now?

"And these days," I pressed on, fastening to my little narrative, "I find myself cherishing this house desperately, and cherishing as well all my mortal connections. My Aunt Lily I cherish above all. But there are others, others who must never know what I am."

He studied me patiently, as if pondering these things.

"Your conscience is tuned like a violin," he said pensively. "Do you really like having them here, the strangers, the Christmas and Easter guests, under your own roof?"

"It's cheerful," I admitted. "There's always light and movement. There are voices and the dull vibration of the busy stairs. Sometimes guests complain - the grits is watery or the gravy is lumpy - and in the old days, my grandmother Sweetheart would cry over those complaints, and my grandfather - Pops, we all called him - would privately slam his fist down on the kitchen table; but in the main, the guests love the place. . .

". . . And now and then it can be lonesome here, melancholy and dismal, no matter how bright the chandeliers. I think that when my grandparents died and that part of it was all over I felt a. . . a deep depression that seemed linked to Golden-Shore Manor, though I couldn't leave it, and wouldn't of my own accord."

He nodded at these words as though he understood them. He was looking at me as surely as I was looking at him. He was appraising me as surely as I appraised him.

I was thinking how very attractive he was, I couldn't stop myself, with his yellow hair so thick and long, turning so gracefully at the collar of his coat, and his large probing blue eyes. There are very few creatures on earth who have true violet eyes. The slight difference between his eyes meant nothing. His sun-browned skin was flawless. What he saw in me with his questioning gaze, I couldn't know.

"You know, you can roam about this house," I said, still vaguely shocked that I had his interest, the words spilling anxiously from me again. "You can roam from room to room, and there are ghosts. Sometimes even the tourists see the ghosts."

"Did that scare them?" he asked with genuine curiosity.

"Oh, no, they're too gung ho to be in a haunted house. They love it. They see things where there are no things. They ask to be left alone in haunted rooms."

He laughed silently.

"They claim to hear bells ring that aren't ringing," I went on, smiling back at him, "and they smell coffee when there is no coffee, and they catch the drift of exotic perfumes. Now and then there was a tourist or two who was genuinely frightened, in fact there were several in the bed-and-board days who packed up immediately, but in the main, the reputation of the place sold it. And then, of course, there were those who actually saw ghosts."

"And you, you do see the ghosts," he said.

"Yes," I answered. "Most of the ghosts are weak things, hardly more than vapor, but there are exceptions. . ." I hesitated. I was lost for a moment. I felt my words might trigger some awful apparition, but I wanted so to confide in him. Stumbling, I went on:

"Yes, extraordinary exceptions. . ." I broke off.

"I want you to tell me," he said. "You have a room upstairs, don't you? A quiet place where we can talk. But I sense someone else in this house."

He glanced towards the hallway.

"Yes, Aunt Lily in the back bedroom," I said. "It won't take more than a moment for me to see her."

"That's a curious name, Aunt Lily," he remarked, his smile brightening again. "Will you take me to see her as well?"

"Absolutely," I answered, without the hesitation of common sense. "Lily McQueen is her name, and everyone hereabouts calls her Miss Lily or Aunt Lily."

We went into the hallway together and once again he glanced up at the curving stairs.

I led him back past it, his boots sounding sharp on the marble, and I brought him to the open door of Aunt Lily's room.

There she was, my darling, quite resplendent, and very busy, and not in the least disturbed by our approach.

She sat at her marble table just to the right of her dressing table, the whole making the L in which she was most happy. The nearby floor lamp as well as the frilly lights on the dressing table illuminated her wonderfully, and she had her dozens of cameos out before her on the marble and her bone-handled magnifying glass in her right hand.

She seemed dreadfully frail in her white quilted satin robe, with its buckled belt around her tiny waist, her throat wrapped well in a white silk scarf tucked into her lapels, over which rested her favorite necklace of diamonds and pearls. Her soft gray hair was curled naturally around her face, and her small eyes were full of an exuberant spirit as she studied the cameos at hand. Under the table, and where her robe was parted, I could see that she wore her perilous pink-sequined high-heeled shoes. I wanted to lecture. Ever a danger, those spike-heeled shoes.

Aunt Lily seemed the perfect name for her, and I felt an instinctive pride in her, that she had been the guardian angel of my life. I had no fear of her recognizing anything abnormal in Francis, what with his tanned skin, except perhaps his excessive beauty. And I was happy with the moment beyond words.

The whole room made a lovely picture as I tried to see it the way that Francis must see it, what with the canopied bed to the far left. It had only recently been redone in scallops of rose-colored satin, ornamented with darker braid, and it was made up already, which wasn't always the case, with the heavy satin cover and pillow shams and other decorative pillows in a heap. The rose damask couch and scattered armchairs matched the hangings of the bed.

Jaz was there in the shadows, our lifelong housekeeper, whose silky dark skin and fine features made her a special beauty, just as surely as Aunt Lily. She looked uncommonly sharp in her red sheath dress and high heels, with a string of pearls around her neck. I'd given her those pearls, hadn't I?

Jaz gave me a little wave, and then went back to straightening small items on the bedside table, and as Aunt Lily looked up and greeted me, crying "Alfred!" with a little touch of ecstasy, Jasmine stopped her work and came forward, slipping right past us out of the room.

I wanted to hug Jaz. It had been nights since I'd seen her. But I was afraid. Then I thought, no, I'm going to do it for as long as I can do it, and I've fed and I'm warm. A greedy sense of goodness overcame me, that I wasn't damned. I felt too much love. I stepped back and caught Jaz in my arms.

She was beautifully built, and her skin was a lovely color of milk chocolate and her eyes were hazel and her hair extremely woolly, and always beautifully bleached yellow and close-cropped to her very round head.

"Ah, that's my Little Boss," she said as she hugged me in return. We were in the shadows of the hallway. "My mysterious Little Boss," she went on, pressing me tight against her bosom so that her head was against my chest. "My wandering Little Boy, whom I scarcely ever see at all."

"You're my girlfriend forever," I whispered, kissing the top of her head. In this close company, the blood of the dead was serving me well. And besides, I was hopeful and slightly crazy.

"You come in here, Alfred," called out Aunt Lily, and Jaz softly let me go and she went towards the rear door.

"Ah, you have a friend with you," said Aunt Lily as I obeyed her, Francis at my side. The room was warmer than the rest of the house.

Aunt Lily's voice was ageless, if not actually youthful, and she spoke with a clear commanding diction.

"I'm so pleased you have company," she said. "And what a fine strapling of a youth you are," she said to Francis, satirizing herself ever so delightfully. "Come here so I can see you. Ah, but you are handsome. Come into the light."

"And you, my dear lady, are a vision," Francis said, his French accent thickening just a tiny bit as if for emphasis, and, leaning over the marble table with its random cameos, he bent to kiss her hand.

She was a vision, there was no doubt of it, her face warm and pretty for all its years. It wasn't gaunt so much as naturally angular, and her thinning lips were neatly brightened with rose lipstick, and her eyes, in spite of the fine wrinkles around them, were still vividly blue. The diamonds and pearls on her breast were stunning, and she wore several rich diamond rings on her long hands.

The jewels as always seemed part of her power and dignity, as if age had given her strong advantage, and a sweet femininity seemed to characterize her as well.

"Over here, Little Boy," she said to me.

I went to her side and bent down to receive her kiss on my cheek. That had been my custom ever since I'd grown to the staggering height of six foot four, and she often took hold of my head and teasingly refused to let me go. This time, she didn't do it. She was too distracted by the alluring creature standing before her table, with his cordial smile.

"And look at your coat," she said to Francis, "how marvelous. Why, it's a wide-skirted frock coat. Wherever did you get it, and the cameo buttons, how perfect. Will you come here this very minute and let me see them? You can see that I've a positive mania for cameos. And now as the years have gone by, I think of little else."

Francis came round the table as I moved away. I was frightened suddenly, very frightened, that she would sense something about him, but no sooner had this thought gripped me than I realized he had the situation entirely under his command.

Hadn't another Blood Drinker, my Maker, charmed Aunt Lily in the same manner? Why the hell should I be so afraid?

As she examined the buttons, remarking that each was a different muse of the Grecian Nine Muses, Francis was beaming down on her as if he were genuinely smitten, and I loved him for it. Because Aunt Lily was the person I loved most in all the world. Having the two of them together was a little more than I could bear.

"Yes, a real true frock coat," she said.

"Well, I'm a musician, Madam," Francis said to her. "You know in this day and age a rock musician can wear a frock coat if he wishes, and so I indulge myself. I'm theatrical and incorrigible. A regular beast when it comes to the exaggerated and the eccentric. I like to clear all obstacles when I enter a room, and I have a perfect mania for antique things."

"Yes, you're so right to have it," she said, exulting in him obviously, as he stepped back and joined me where I stood before the table. "My two handsome boys," she remarked. "You do know that Alfred's mother is a singer, though what kind of a singer I'm not quite prepared to say."

Francis didn't know, and he gave me a curious glance and a slight teasing smile.

"Country music," I said quickly. "Jill Jones is her name. She's got a powerful voice."

"Very much diluted country music," said Aunt Lily with a vague tone of disapproval. "I think she calls it country pop, and that can account for a lot. She has a good voice, however, and she writes occasional lyrics that aren't too bad. She's good at a sort of mournful ballad, almost Celtic, though she doesn't know it - but you know, a little minor-key bluegrass sound is what she really likes to do, and if she did what she likes to do rather than what she thinks she ought to do she might have the very fame she so desires." Aunt Lily sighed.

I marveled, not only at the wisdom of what she'd said, but at the curious disloyalty, because Aunt Lily was never one to criticize her own flesh and blood. But something seemed to have been stirred inside her by Francis' gaze. Perhaps he had worked a vague charm, and she was giving forth her deepest thoughts.

"But you, young man," she said, "I'm your Aunt Lily from now on and forever, certainly; but what is your name?"

"Francis, Madam," he answered with the accent going strong. "I'm not really very famous either. And I don't sing anymore at all actually, except to myself when I'm driving my black Porsche madly or riding my motorcycle at a raging speed on the roads. Then I'm a regular Pavarotti -."

"Oh, but you mustn't go speeding!" Aunt Lily declared with a sudden attack of pure seriousness. "That's how I lost my husband, Adam McQueen. It was a new Bugatti, you know what a Bugatti is" (Francis nodded), "and he was so proud of it, his fine European sports car, and we were racing down the Pacific Coast Highway One, and on an unclouded summer day, screeching around the turns, down to Big Sur, and he lost control of the wheel and went right through the windshield. Dead like that. And I came to my senses with a crowd around me, only inches from a cliff that went sheer down into the sea."

"Appalling," said Francis earnestly. "Was it very long ago?"

"Of course, decades ago, when I was foolish enough to do such things," said Aunt Lily, "and I never remarried; we Jones', we don't remarry. And Adam McQueen left me a fortune, some consolation, I've never found another like him, with so much passion and so many happy delusions, but then I never much looked." She shook her head at the pity of it. "But that's a dreary subject, all that, he's buried in the Golden-Shore tomb in the Metairie Cemetery; we have a large tomb there, an inspiring little chapel of a tomb, and I'll soon be in it too."

"Oh, my God, no," I whispered, with a little too much fear.

"You hush now," she said, glancing up at me. "And Francis, my darling Francis, tell me about your clothes, your odd and bold taste. I love it. I must confess that to picture you in that frock coat, rushing along on a motorcycle, is quite amusing, to be sure."

"Well Madam," he said, laughing softly, "my longing for the stage and the microphone is gone, but I won't give up the fancy clothes. I can't give them up. I'm the prisoner of capricious fashion and am actually quite plain tonight. I think nothing of piling on the lace and the diamond cuff links, and I envy Alfred that snappy leather coat he's wearing. You could call me a Goth, I think." He glanced at me very naturally, as though we were both simple humans. "Don't they call us snappy antique dressers Goth now, Alfred?"

"I think they do," I said, trying to catch up.

This little speech of his made Aunt Lily laugh and laugh. She had forgotten Adam McQueen, who had in fact died a long time ago into stories.

Again, Aunt Lily laughed, plainly surprised and utterly seduced. "You seem a fine and invigorating friend for Alfred."

"That's my ambition, to be his fine friend," said Francis immediately and sincerely, "but don't let me intrude."

"Never even think of it," Aunt Lily offered. "You're welcome under my roof. I like you. I know I do. And you, Alfred, where have you been of late?"

"Round and about, Aunt Lily," I answered. "Bad as Jill in my roamings, round and about - I don't know."

"And have you brought me a cameo?" she asked. "This is our custom, Francis," she explained, and then: "It's been a week since you have been in this room, Alfred Jones. I want my cameo. You must have one. I won't let you off the hook."

"Oh, yes, you know I almost forgot about it," I said. (And with reason!) I felt in my right-hand coat pocket for a little tissue-covered package that I'd put there nights ago. "It's from New York, this one, a lovely shell cameo."

I unwrapped the paper and put it before her in all its glory, one of the largest shell cameos that she would own. The image was from the white strata of the shell, naturally, and the background a dark pink. The cameo was a perfect oval with a particularly exquisite scalloped frame of heavy 24-carat gold.

"Medusa," she said, with obvious satisfaction, identifying the woman's profile at once by her winged head and the wild snakes for hair. "And so large and so sharply carved."

"Fearsome," I said. "The best Medusa I've ever seen. Note the height of the wing, and a bit of the orange strata on the wing tip. I meant to bring it sooner. I wish that I had."

"Oh, there's no point to that, my darling," she said. "Don't regret it when you don't come to see me. I think I'm timeless. You're here now and you've remembered me. That's what counts." She looked up to Francis eagerly. "You know the story of Medusa, don't you?" she asked.

Francis hesitated, only smiling, obviously wanting her to speak more than he wanted to speak himself. He looked rather radiant in his rapture with her, and she was beaming back.

"Once beautiful, then turned into a monster," said Aunt Lily, clearly enjoying the moment immensely. "With a face that could turn men to stone. Perseus sought her by her reflection in his polished shield, and once he'd slain her the winged horse Pegasus was born from the drops of blood that fell to earth from her severed head."

"And it was that head," said Francis confidingly, "that Athena then emblazoned on her shield."

"You're so very right," said Aunt Lily.

"A charm against harm," said Francis softly. "That's what she became once beheaded. Another wondrous transformation, I think - beauty to monster, monster to charm."

"Yes, you're right on all counts," said Aunt Lily. "A charm against harm," she repeated. "Here, come, Alfred, help me take off these heavy diamonds," she said, "and get a gold chain for me. I want to wear Medusa on my neck."

It was a simple matter to do as she asked. I came around directly to the dressing table and removed the diamonds from her, giving her a sly kiss on the cheek, and put the diamond necklace in its customary leather box. This always sat atop her dressing table on the right-hand side. The gold chains were in a box in the top drawer, each in its plastic pouch.

From these I chose a strong chain of bright 24-carat gold, and one that would give her a snug but good fit. I threaded it through the bail attached to the cameo, and then put the chain around her neck for her and snapped the clasp.

After another quick couple of kisses, very powdery and rather like kissing a person made of pure white confectioners' sugar, I came around in front of her again. The cameo was perfectly nested against the full gathered silk of the scarf and looked both imposing and rich.

"I have to admit," I said of my new purchase, "it is really quite a trophy. Medusa is her wicked self in this one, not just a pretty winged girl with snakes, and that's rare."

"Yes," said Francis agreeably, "and so much stronger is the charm."

"You think so?" Aunt Lily asked him. For all her dignity, the cameo befitted her more than the roaring diamonds. "You're a curious young man," she went on to Francis. "You speak slowly and reflectively, and the timbre of your voice is deep. I like it. Alfred was never bookworm but swallowed mythology by the mouthful, once he could read, and, mind you, that wasn't until very late. But you, how do you know about mythology, for surely you do? And obviously something about cameos, or so I judge by your coat."

"Knowledge drifts in and out of my mind," said Francis with a little look of honest distress and a shake of his head. "I devour it and then I lose it and sometimes I can't reach for any knowledge that I ought to possess. I feel desolate, but then knowledge returns or I seek it out in a new source."

How they connected, the two of them, it was amazing to me. And then I felt a stab of bitter memory again, of my Maker, that appalling presence, that damnable presence, once connecting with Aunt Lily in this very room and in the very same easy way. The subject had been cameos then too. Cameos. But this was Francis, not my Maker, this was not that loathsome being. This was my hero under my roof.

"But you love books, then," Aunt Lily was saying. I had to listen.

"Oh, yes," Francis said. "Sometimes they're the only thing that keeps me alive."

"What a thing to say at your age," she laughed.

"No, but one can feel desperate at any age, don't you think? The young are eternally desperate," he said frankly. "And books, they offer one hope - that a whole universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that new universe, one is saved."

"Oh, yes, I think so, I really do," Aunt Lily responded, almost gleefully. "It ought to be that way with people and sometimes it is. Imagine - each new person an entire universe. Do you think we can allow that? You're clever and keen."

"I think we don't want to allow it," Francis responded. "We're too jealous, and fearful. But we should allow it, and then our existence would be wondrous as we went from soul to soul."

Aunt Lily laughed gaily.

"Oh, but you are a specimen," she said. "Wherever did you come from? Oh, I wish that Alfred's teacher Nash was here. He'd so enjoy you. Or that little Tommy wasn't away at school. Tommy is Alfred's uncle, which is slightly misleading since Tommy is only fourteen, and then there's Jerome. Where's little Jerome? Probably fast asleep. Ah, we'll have to make do with only me -."

"But tell me if you will, Miss Lily," asked Francis, "why do you love the cameos so much? These buttons, I can't claim to have chosen them with much care, or to have been obsessed with them. I didn't know they were the Nine Muses until you told me, and for that I'm in your debt. But you have here a fine love affair. How did it come about?"

"Can't you see with your own eyes?" she asked. She offered him a shell cameo of the Three Graces and he held it up, inspecting it, and then he laid it down reverently before her again.

"They're works of art," said Aunt Lily, "of a special sort. They're pictures, complete little pictures, that's what matters. Small, intricate and intense. Let's use your metaphor of the entire universe again; that's what you find in many of these."

She was in a rapture.

"One can wear them," she said, "but it doesn't cheapen them to do it. You yourself just spoke of the charm." She touched the Medusa at her breast. "And of course I find something unique in every one I acquire. In fact, there's infinite variety in cameos. Here, look," she said, handing Lestat another example. "You see, it's a mythical scene of Hercules fighting a bull, and there is a goddess behind him and a graceful female figure in front. I've never seen another like it, though I have hundreds of mythological scenes."

"They are intense, yes," said Francis. "I see your point completely, and it's truly divine, yes."

She looked about for a moment and then picked up another large shell cameo and offered it to him.

"Now that's Rebecca at the Well," she said. "A common scene depicted on cameos, and coming from the Bible, don't you know, from the book of Genesis, when Abraham sent a messenger to find a wife for his son Isaac, and Rebecca came out to greet this messenger at the village well."

"Yes, I know the story," Francis said quietly. "And it's an excellent cameo too."

She looked at him eagerly, as much into his eyes as at his hands, with their lustrous fingernails.

"That was one of the first cameos I ever saw," she said, taking it back from him, "and it was with Rebecca at the Well that my collection began. I was given ten altogether of that exact same theme, Rebecca at the Well, though all were different in their carvings, and I have them all here. There's a story to it, to be sure."

He was obviously curious, and seemed to possess all the time in the world.

"Tell me," he said simply.

"Oh, but how I have behaved!" she suddenly remarked, "allowing you to stand there as if you were bad boys brought before the principal. Forgive me, you must sit down. Oh, but I am witless to be so remiss in my own boudoir! For shame!"

I was about to object, to declare it unnecessary, but I saw that Francis wanted to know her, and she was having such a wonderful time.

"Alfred," she declared, "you bring those two chairs here. We'll make a cozy circle, Francis, if I'm to tell a tale."

I knew there was no arguing. Besides, I was painfully stimulated that these two liked each other. I was crazy again.

As to the chairs, I did as I was told, crossing the room, taking up two of the straight-back chairs from Aunt Lily's round writing table between the back windows, and setting the chairs down right where we had stood so that we could face her again.

She took the plunge:

"It came about in this very room, my introduction to the passion for the cameo," she said, her eyes flitting over both of us and then fixing firmly on Lestat. "I was nine years old then and my grandfather was dying in here, a dreadful old man, Axellion Jones, the great monster of our history, the man who built this house, a man of whom everybody was afraid. My father, his only living son, William, tried to keep me away from him, but one day when the old beast was alone he saw me peeping in at that door.

"He ordered me to come inside and I was too afraid not to do it, and curious besides. He was sitting here where I am now, only there was no fancy dressing table here. Just his easy chair, and he sat in it, with a blanket over his lap, and both his hands on his silver-knobbed cane. His face was stubbly with his rough beard, and he wore a bib of sorts, and dribbled from the edge of his mouth.

"Oh, what a curse to live to that age to be slobbering as he was, like a bulldog. I think of a bulldog every time I think of him. And mind you, a sickroom in those days, no matter how well attended, wasn't what a sickroom is today! It reeked, I tell you. If I ever become that old and start to slobber, Alfred has my express permission to blow my brains out with my own pearl-handled gun, or to sink me with morphine! Remember that, Little Boy."

"Of course," I rejoined, winking at her.

"Oh, you little devil, I'm serious - you can't imagine how revolting it can be, and all I ask is permission to say my Rosary before you execute the sentence, and then I'll be gone." She looked at the cameos and then about herself and back to Francis.

"The Old Man, yes, the Old Man," she said, "and he was staring blankly into nothing before he saw me, mumbling to himself until he started to mumble to me. There was a little chest of drawers beside him where it was rumored he kept his money, but how I knew this I don't now recall.

"As I was saying, the old reprobate told me to come in, and then he unlocked the top drawer of this chest and he took out a small velvet box and, letting his cane fall over on the floor, he put the box in my hands. 'Open that up and hurry,' he said. 'Because you're my only granddaughter and I want you to have it, and your mother is too foolish to want it. I said hurry up!

"Well, I did precisely what he told me, and inside were all these cameos, and I thought they were fascinating with all their tiny little people on them and their frames of gold.

" 'Rebecca at the Well,' he said. 'All of them of the same story, Rebecca at the Well.' And then, 'If they tell you I murdered her they're telling you the truth. She couldn't be satisfied with cameos and diamonds and pearls, not that one. I killed her, or more truthfully, and it's time for the truth, I dragged her to her death.¡¯

"Of course I was awestruck by his words," said Aunt Lily, "but instead of being suspicious and horrified, I was impressed that he was addressing these words to me. And he went on talking, the slobber coming down the side of his mouth to his chin. I should have helped him wipe his face, but I was too young to do anything as compassionate as that.

" 'Those were the old days,' he said to me, 'and she wore those high-collared lace blouses, and the cameos looked so very precious at her throat. She was so precious when I first brought her here. They're all so precious in the beginning and then they turn rotten. Except my poor dead Virginia Lee. My lovely, unforgettable Virginia Lee. Would she had lived forever, my own Virginia Lee. But the others, rotten, I tell you, greedy and rotten every time.

" 'But she was the worst of all my disappointments,' he told me, fixing me with his mean eyes. 'Rebecca, and Rebecca at the Well,' he said. 'It was he who gave me the first cameo for her, when he'd heard her name, telling me the story of it, and he that brought several more, all of Rebecca, all gifts for her, he said, he being the evil spy that he was, ever watching us; they all came from him, all these cameos, if truth be known, from him, though there's no taint on it, and you're just a child.' "

Aunt Lily paused, appealing to Francis mutely to assure herself, I think, that she had an audience, and then when she saw that both of us were rapt, she went on.

"I remember all those words," she said, "and in my girl's heart I wanted the enchanting cameos, of course. I wanted them, the whole box! And so I held it tight as he went on, barking his words, or maybe even gnashing them out, it's hard to say. 'She grew to love the cameos,' the old beast said, 'as long as she could still dream and be content at the same time. But women aren't gifted with contentment. And it was he that killed her for me, a bloody sacrifice, that's what she was, an offering up to him, you might say and I would say, but I was the one who dragged her to it. And it wasn't the first time that I'd taken some poor misshapen soul to those bloody chains, to be sure.' "

I shivered. These words sounded a deep dark chord in me. I had a passel of secrets that weighed on me like so many stones. I couldn't do anything except listen in a vague spell as she went on.

"I remembered those words 'to those bloody chains,' " said Aunt Lily, "and all his other words as he yammered away: 'She gave me no choice, if the truth be known.' He was almost bellowing. 'Now you take those cameos and wear them, no matter what you think of me. I have something there sweet and costly to give you, and you're just a little girl and my grandchild, and that's what I wish it to be.¡¯

"Of course, I didn't know how to answer him," Aunt Lily went on. "I don't think for a moment I believed he was a real murderer, and I certainly didn't know of this strange accomplice to whom he referred, this he, of whom he spoke with such mystery, and I never did find out who the man was, not to this very day. But he knew. And he continued as if I'd lanced a wound. 'You know, I confess it, over and over,' he said, 'to the priest and to the sheriff, and neither believes me, and the sheriff just says she's been gone some thirty-five years and I'm imagining, and as for him, what if his gold built this house; he's a liar and a cheat and he's left me this house as a prison, as a mausoleum, and I can't go any longer to him, though I know he's out there, he's out there on Sugar Devil Island, I can feel him, I can feel his eyes on me in the night when he comes near. I can't catch him. I never could. And I can't go out there anymore to curse him to his face, I'm too old now, and too weak.

"Oh, it was a powerful mystery," said Aunt Lily. " 'What if his gold built this house?' I kept it secret what he'd said. I didn't want my mother to take the cameos away. She wasn't a Jones, of course, and that's what they always said of her, 'She's not a Jones,' as though that explained her intelligence and common sense. But the point was, my room upstairs was full of clutter. It was an easy thing to hide the cameos away. I'd take them out at night and look at them and they bewitched me. And so my obsession began.

"Now, my grandfather did within a few months' time get right up out of this room and stagger down to the landing and put himself right into a pirogue and row off with a pole into Sugar Devil Swamp. Of course the farmhands were hollering at him to stop, but he went off and vanished. And no one ever saw him again, ever. He was forever gone."

A stealthy trembling had come over me, a trembling of the heart perhaps more than the body. I watched her, and her words ran as if written on ribbons being pulled through my mind.

She shook her head. She moved the cameo of Rebecca at the Well with her left hand. I could no more dare to read her mind than I would to strike her or say a cross word to her. I waited in love and full of old dread.

Francis seemed quietly entranced, waiting on her to speak again, which she did:

"Of course eventually they declared him officially dead, and long before that, when they were still searching for him - though no one knew how to get to the island, no one ever even found the island - I told my mother all he'd said. She told my father. But they knew nothing of the old man's murder confession or his strange accomplice, the mysterious he, only that Grandfather left behind him plenty of money in numerous deposit boxes in various banks.

"Now maybe if my father had not been such a simple and practical man he would have looked into it, but he didn't and neither did my aunt, Manfred's only other child. They didn't see ghosts, those two." She made this remark as if Lestat would naturally regard this as peculiar. "And they had a strong sense, both of them, that Golden-Shore Farm should be worked and should pay. They passed that on to my brother Gravier, Alfred's great-grandfather, and he passed it on to Thomas, Alfred's grandfather, and that was what those men did, the three of them, work, work, work Golden-Shore Farm all the time, and so did their wives, always in the kitchen, always loving you with food, that's what they were like. My father, my brother and my nephew were all real countrymen.

"But there was always money, money from the Old Man, and everybody knew he'd left a fortune, and it wasn't the milk cows and the tung oil trees that made the house so splendid. It was the money that my grandfather had left. In those days people really didn't ask where you got your money. The government didn't care as they do in this day and age. When this house finally fell to me, I searched through all the records, but I couldn't find any mention of the mysterious he, or a partner of any sort, in my grandfather's affairs."

She sighed and then, glancing at Francis' eager face, she continued, her voice tripping a little faster as the past opened up.

"Now, regarding the beautiful Rebecca, my father did have terrible memories of her, and so did my aunt. Rebecca had been a scandalous companion to my grandfather, brought into this very house, after his saint of a wife, Virginia Lee, had died. An evil stepmother if ever there was one, was this Rebecca, too young to be maternal, and violently mean to my father and my aunt, who were just little children, and mean as well to everyone else.

"They said that at the dinner table, to which she was allowed to come in all her obvious impropriety, she'd sing out my poor Aunt Camille's private verses just to show her she'd snuck into her room and read them, and one night, gentle though she was, Aunt Camille Jones rose up and threw an entire bowl of hot soup in Rebecca's face."

Aunt Lily paused to sigh at this old violence and then went on:

"They all hated Rebecca, or so the story went. My poor Aunt Camille. She might have been another Emily Dickinson or Emily Bront? if that evil Rebecca hadn't sung out her poetry. My poor Aunt Camille, she tore it all up after those eyes had seen it and those lips had spoken it and never wrote another verse again. She cut off her long hair for spite and burnt it up in the grate.

"But one day, after many another agonizing dinner-table struggle, this evil Rebecca did disappear. And, with no one loving her, no one wanted to know why or how. Her clothes were found in the attic, Jaz says, and so says Alfred. Imagine it. A trunk or two of Rebecca's clothes. Alfred's examined them. Alfred's brought down more cameos from them. Alfred insists we keep them. I'd never have had them brought down. I'm too superstitious for that. And the chains!. . ."

She stole an intimate and meaningful glance at me. Rebecca's clothes. The shiver in me was relentless.

Aunt Lily sighed, and, looking down and then up at me again, she whispered:

"Forgive me, Alfred, that I talk as much as I do. And especially of Rebecca. I don't mean to upset you with those old tales of Rebecca. We best have done with Rebecca perhaps. Why not make a bonfire of her clothes, Alfred? You think it's cold enough in this room, what with the air-conditioning, for us to light a real fire in the grate?" She laughed it off as soon as she'd uttered it.

"Does this talk upset you, Alfred?" Francis asked in a small voice.

"Aunt Lily," I declared. "Nothing you say could ever sit wrong with me, don't be afraid of it. I talk all the time of ghosts and spirits," I continued. "Why should I be upset that anyone talks of real things, of Rebecca, when she was very much alive and cruel to everyone? Or of Aunt Camille and her lost poems. I don't think my friend here knows how much I came to know Rebecca. But I'll tell him if he wants to hear another tale or two later on."

Francis nodded and made some small sound of assent. "I'm very ready for it," he said.

"It seems when a person sees ghosts, for whatever reason, he has to talk of it," said Aunt Lily. "And surely I should understand."

Something opened in me rather suddenly.

"Aunt Lily, you know my talk of ghosts and spirits more truly than anyone except Walter Oliver," I said calmly. "I'm speaking of my old friend of the Silvine because he did know too. And whatever your judgment of me, you've always been gentle and respecting, which I appreciate with all my heart -."

"Of course," she said quickly and decisively.

"But do you really believe what I told you of Rebecca's ghost?" I asked. "I can't tell even now. People find a million ways not to believe our ghost stories. And people vary in their fascination as to ghosts, and I have never been very sure of where you stand. Now's a good time to ask, isn't it, when I have you in the storytelling mood."

I was reddening, I knew it, and my voice had a break in it which I didn't like. Oh, the thunder of ghosts and their aftermath. Let it distract me from Walter Oliver in my lethal arms and the bloody bride lying on the bed. Blunders, blunders!

"Where I stand," she said with a sigh, looking directly from Francis to me and back again. "Why, your friend here is going to think he's entered a house of lunatics if we don't break off with this. But Alfred, tell me now that you haven't gone back to the Silvine. Nothing will upset me so much as that. I'll rue the night I ever told such stories to you and your friend if it sends you back to them."

"No, Aunt Lily," I answered. But I knew I had reached my limit as to how much I could conceal if this painful conversation went on. I tried to rejoice again quietly in the fact that we were all together, but my mind was jumbled with frightening images. I was sitting very still, trying to keep all tight in my heart.

"Don't go into that swamp, Alfred," Aunt Lily said, abruptly appealing to me, as if from the core of her being. "Don't go to that accursed Sugar Devil Island. I know your adventuresome spirit, Alfred. Don't be proud of your discovery. Don't go. You must stay away from that place."

I was hurt through no fault of hers. I prayed I could soon confess to Francis or someone in this world that her warnings were now too late. They had been timely once, but a veil had fallen over all the past, with its impetuosity and sense of invincibility. The mysterious he was no mystery whatsoever to me.

"Don't think about it, Aunt Lily," I said as gently as I could. "What did your father tell you? That there was no devil in Sugar Devil Swamp."

"Ah, yes, Alfred," she responded, "but then my father never set out in a pirogue in those dark waters to roam that island as you do. Nobody ever found that island before you, Alfred. That wasn't my father's nature, and it wasn't your grandfather's nature to do anything so impractical himself. Oh, he hunted near the banks and trapped the crawfish, and we do that now. But he never went in search of that island, and I want you to put it behind you now."

Keenly, I felt her need of me, as vividly as if I'd never felt it before.

"I love you too much to leave you," I said quickly, the words rolling from me before I thought of precisely what they meant. And then as suddenly: "I'll never leave you, I swear it."

"My dear, my lovely dear," she said, musing, her left hand playing with the cameos, lining up Rebecca at the Well, one, two, three, four and five.

"They have no taint, Aunt Lily," I said looking at those particular cameos, remembering discordantly but quite definitely that a ghost can wear a cameo. I wondered, Did a ghost have a choice? Did a ghost pillage its trunks in the attic?

Aunt Lily nodded and smiled. "My boy, my beautiful Little Boy," she said. Then she looked to Francis again. His demeanor, his kindliness towards her had not changed one jot.

"You know, Francis, I can't travel anymore," she said quite seriously, her words saddening me. "And sometimes I have the horrid thought that my life is finished. I must realize that I'm eighty-five. I can't wear my beloved high heels any longer, at least not out of this room."

She looked down at her feet, which we could still plainly see, at the vicious sequined shoes of which she was so proud.

"It's even an undertaking to go into New Orleans to the jewelers who know I'm a collector," she pressed on. "Though I have out back at all times the biggest stretch limousine imaginable, certainly the biggest limousine in the parish, and gentlemen to drive me and accompany me and Jaz, darling Jaz of course. But where are you these days, Alfred? It seems if I do wake at a civil hour and make some appointment you can't be found."

I was in a haze. It was a night for shame and more shame. I felt as cut off from her as I was near to her, and I thought of Walter again, of the taste of his blood and how close I had come to swallowing his soul, and I wondered again if Francis had worked some magic on both of us - Aunt Lily and me - to make us feel so totally without guile.

But I liked it. I trusted Francis, and a sudden mad thought came to me, that if he was going to hurt me, he would never have gone so far in listening to Aunt Lily.

Aunt Lily went on with a lovely animation, her voice more pleasant though the words were still sad.

"And so I sit here with my little talismans," she said, "and I watch my old movies, hoping that Alfred will come, but understanding if he doesn't." She gestured to the large television to our left. "I try not to think bitterly about my weaknesses. Mine has been a rich, full life. And my cameos make me happy. The pure obsession with them makes me happy. It always has, really. I've collected cameos since that long-ago day. Can you see what I mean?"

"Yes," said Francis, "I understand you perfectly. I'm glad that I met you. I'm glad to be received in your house."

"That's a quaint way to put it," she said, obviously charmed by him, and her smile brightened and so did her deep-set eyes. "But you are most graciously welcome here."

"Thank you, Madam," Francis replied.

"Aunt Lily, my darling," she pressed.

"Aunt Lily, I love you," he responded warmly.

"You go now, both of you," she said. "Alfred, put the chairs back because you're big and strong, and Jaz will have to drag them over the carpet, and you are free, both of you, my young ones, and I am so put out that I have ended this spirited conversation on a sad note."

"On a grand note," said Francis, rising, as I took both the chairs easily and returned them to the writing table. "Don't think I haven't been honored by your confidences," he went on. "I've found you a grand lady, if you'll forgive me, an entrancing lady indeed."

She broke into a delighted riff of laughter, and as I came around in front of the table again and saw her shoes glittering there as if her feet were immortal and could carry her anywhere, I suddenly detached from all decorum and went down on my knees and bent my lips to kiss her shoes.

This I had done often with her; in fact, I had caressed her shoes and kissed them to tease her, and liked the feel of her arch in them, and I kissed that too, the thin nylon-covered skin, often and now, but for me to do it in front of Francis was outrageously amusing to her. And on and on she laughed in a lovely soft high laugh that made me think of a crowded silver belfry against the blue sky gone quite wild.

As I climbed to my feet, she said:

"You go on now. I officially release you from attendance. Be off."

I went to kiss her again, and her hand on my neck felt so delicate. A ripping sense of mortality weakened me. The words she'd spoken about her age echoed in my ears. And I was aware of a hot mixture of emotions - -that she had always made me feel safe, but now I didn't feel that she herself was safe, and so my sadness was strong.

Francis made her a little bow, and we left the room.

Jaz was waiting in the hallway, a warm patient shadow, and she asked where in the house I might be. Her sister, Sam, and their grandmother Big Ramona, were in the kitchen, ready to prepare anything we might want.

I told her we didn't need anything just now. Not to worry. And that I was going up to my rooms.

She confirmed for me that Aunt Lily's nurse would come later, a ray of sunshine with a blood-pressure cup by the name of Cindy, with whom Aunt Lily would probably watch the movie of the night, which had already been announced as Gladiator, directed by Ridley Scott. Jaz, Sam and Big Ramona would of course watch the movie as well.

If Aunt Lily had her way, and there was no reason to think she couldn't, there might be another couple of nurses in the room for the movie too. It was her habit to make fast friends of her nurses, to inspect photographs of their children, and receive birthday cards from them, and to gather as many such young attendants around her as she could.

Naturally, she had her own friends, scattered about through the woods and up and down the country roads, in town and out of it, but they were as old as she was and could hardly come out to spend the night with her in her room. Those ladies and gentlemen she met at the country club for luncheon. The night belonged to her and her court.

That I had been a constant courtier before the Dark Blood was a fact. But since that time I'd come and gone irregularly, a monster among innocents, beleaguered and angered by the scent of blood.

And so Francis and I left her, and the night - though I had almost murdered Walter, and had fed without conscience on an anonymous woman, and had attended Aunt Lily in her storytelling - was actually quite young.

Francis and I approached the staircase and he made a sign for me to lead the way.

For a moment I thought I heard the rustle of Goblin. I thought I felt his indefinable presence. I stood stock-still, wishing with all my heart for him to get away from me, as far away from me as if he were Satan.

Were the curtains of the parlor moving? I thought I heard the faint music of the baubles of the chandeliers. What a concert they could make if they all shivered together. And he had done such tricks, perhaps without deliberation, because he who had once been so silent now came and went with a bit of clumsiness, perhaps more than he could ever know.

Whatever the case, he was not near me now.

No spirits, no ghosts. Only the clean cooled air of the house as it came through the vents with the soft sound of a low breeze.

"He's not with us," said Francis quietly.

"You know that for certain?" I asked.

"No, but you do," he replied.

He was right.

I led the way up the curving staircase. I felt sharply that for better or worse, I would now have Francis to myself.


End file.
